


Scarecrow, Cheshire, Wolf

by windyfiend



Series: Abandoned Experiments [1]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Companion Piece, Corruption, Enemies to Friends, Gen, Ghosts, Horror, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Psychic Abilities, RA9 Cult, Red Ice (Detroit: Become Human), Vigilante Justice
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-03-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 37,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22075753
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/windyfiend/pseuds/windyfiend
Summary: The cult of RA9 requires human sacrifices. The Tracis embark on their separate quests to find one another. Ralph is on the run, wanted for a double homicide. Jerry will do anything to reconnect with the others. Gavin is terrified of what lurks inside him. RK900 has a plan.
Series: Abandoned Experiments [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2072607
Comments: 115
Kudos: 15





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This is a companion fic to "A Strange Comet" which is the previous fic in this series. It takes place at the same time.
> 
> "Scarecrow, Cheshire, Wolf" was originally published last year, but I deleted it when I realized the timeline was royally screwed up. I'm back for another crack at it, this time with the story planned out ahead of time!
> 
> "Trace" is Brown-Haired Traci/Ripple, while "Traci" is Blue-Haired Traci/Echo. The original fic in this series was written before the names came out, so just sticking to it here.

Cold air scraped their open mouths in the dark, an echo, running footsteps, the thrash of their hearts, grip of their hands crushed to one another ( _never let go, never let go_ ) while behind them swelled the fiery light and stench of blood and anger and burned flesh and the walls shifted black and rippling, screaming with the dead scratched scrawls of their devouring god:

RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9

 _*they betrayed us*_ HK’s voice murmured all around them, in their skulls and in the cracked concrete, and they flung up the stairs with the dark and demons at their back, a flicker of firelight high ahead in the open door.

_*betrayers, heretics, traitors. show them what happens to those who defy our god. their screams will become one with our higher purpose.*_

They tore out of the dark and into the gnashing light of the candles, their shadows flickered across the stained floor, _crashed_ through the cold metal door and into the night and the snow and the cold striking needles and Traci slammed the door against the jagged whispers at their heels while Trace turned and--

_*WHACK*_

\--dropped to the ice, crushed by a baseball bat while Traci scratched and bit and twisted and fought, then grabbed Trace by the shoulder and hauled her quick and stumbling and racing through the snow-choked alley, but another human shadow stepped out into their path.

Trace’s throat snagged tight, constricted, a sharp blade in her back, and she reached up for a handful of the human’s bloody scalp, and over his howl she cried “TRACI RUN!” before the knife gashed her throat, snapped wires and tubes with a hot gush of blue blood and the last thing she heard before she let go was the barbed and desperate scream of the one she loved more than life itself.

Trace opened her eyes, but these eyes belonged to something else.

The racing heart was too small. The teeth too sharp.

She stood up on all fours in the winter moonlight; her orange tail twitched and her claws scraped the ice. The whirr and shiver of her tiny biocomponents were unfamiliar…

...but she was alive.

_Traci._

She whirled in place, and she saw the familiar yard behind Jericho’s office, the barren trees and the snow-heavy bushes, and it didn’t matter how or why she was here.

Traci needed her.

She tried to call, but there was no connectivity function. Nothing with which she could remotely communicate, just a simple shell in the shape of a household pet. Isolated.

“JERRY!” she screamed up at the sixth-floor window, but her voice was only a high-pitched yowl. “HELP ME! OPEN UP! JERRY!” The cat-screech turned to a bitter sob, then a snarl of bristling, deadly fury.

There was no way that oblivious idiot was going to stop her from saving Traci.

She raced like lightning around the office building, but all the windows were sealed tight against the cold. She leaped up onto the narrow door handle, braced her paws and pushed with all of her tiny strength until she’d opened a sliver of warm air from inside. It was enough for a paw to slip in, and she squeezed through.

After that it was only a matter of the elevator, a bounce and a quick jab at the bright-lit button, and the doors dinged and opened. With a leap and a kick, ‘6’ lit up and the elevator closed the twitchy growly orange cat inside.

_*scritch scritch scritch scritch*_ _  
_ _*YOOOOOWWWWLLLL!*_

Strange noises scratched at the office door while inside the Jerrys panicked.

“We’re trying to call her, Markus,” said one, pacing the floor, “but Traci’s not answering us, either.”

“Simon just called,” said another, his voice a shocked breath. “He’s at the monument. He found Trace’s … head.”

“Markus…” the first sobbed.

“We’ve got Josh,” stammered a third. “He made it to the bridge, Traci’s still there but she’s about to jump. Josh, help is coming to you! Connor’s en route! We’re with you, we’ll help you through this. Just breathe, stay with her until Connor gets there.”

A fourth Jerry sat with his head in his hands, shaking, terrified, tears pooling at his feet.

The noises at the door had stopped.

Trace flung across the frozen city like something possessed, a streak of orange in the gray ice and snow, over doorways and rooftops in a straight bounding line for the shining bright bridge in the distance and the black icy river beneath, screaming into the emptiness.

_I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go, don’t let go, you have everything to live for, I love you, I love you, DON’T LET GO…_

She spotted Connor as he slipped away into the sprawl of the city, his face machine-cold, his hand dripping blue. He was going the wrong way.

She saw Josh, streaked with tears, Hank’s arm around him, guiding him to the open door of a cab.

_They were going the wrong way._

Trace skittered quick along the bridge, where the lights glowed pale over the endless flow of cars and rumbling trucks like the world could just go on as if nothing ever happened.

“TRACI!” she yowled, and her voice couldn’t form the name but she knew that Traci would _know_ her, would understand without words, would turn back and smile and come running for an embrace, and they could put this night behind them.

She found a blue stain on a pillar. A chaos of footsteps in the veil of snow. A mark left behind by hands slipped from the frozen rail.

Ice drifted like corpses into the darkness beneath.

Trace stood at the edge where Traci had been  
and screamed.

  
  



	2. Daisies in the Snow

Detroit came alive at night: glowing shop windows, people bundled warm in their coats, streetlights and neon signs reflected on the snow. Laura adjusted her mittens, watched her footprints on the salted sidewalk, turned up the k-pop in her head until her whole chassis thrummed to the perfect soundtrack for night-city dancing.

“Papa?” She showed off her new yellow galoshes with a twirl, spun like a top on an icy patch and nearly slipped. “Can I take Robby his flowers?”

“Isn’t he coming with us to the show tomorrow?” Papa was an ancient LM100, so he really only had four preset expressions, but Laura always knew what he meant by each smile. This one meant he might say yes.

“Sure, but--” She wobbled and bounced into a little pile of snow. “We’re going by his apartment, and they’ll make him happy. He likes daisies, and these ones are nice.”

Papa glanced up at the top-floor window of an old brick apartment. There was a light on inside. He exaggerated a long sigh. “Okay.” While Laura danced, he offered a fistful of flowers out of the dozens cradled in his arm. “I’ll meet you at the motel, okay?”

“Okay!” Laura grabbed the daisies and bolted for the apartment building door. “See you! Love you!”

She raced through the lobby, skirted an old shrieking lady on the stairs, bounded the last three steps in one jump, then stopped and rapped quick on Robby’s door.

“ROBBY!” she called over the music that no one else could hear, and she shuffled and jerked a quick dance like in the videos. She smacked the door with her palm a few times. “I got something for yoooouuu!”

Laura took a step back and squinted up at the peephole. She turned off the music. The quiet felt wrong. “Okay well … I’m coming in!”

She grabbed the lanyard around her neck, dragged the key out of her coat and jammed it in the lock. The door opened for her like it always did.

The daisies dropped at her feet.

Robby was there, underneath the harsh glare of a hanging lamp, sitting in a metal chair facing the door, his head bent forward so she couldn’t see his face, but she could see the big hole in his skull.

She could see the open cavity of his chest, all broken wires and stripped conduits. She could see the zip ties around his wrists and ankles, holding him in that chair he hated.

She could see the dirty tube attached to his stilled dim heart, draining the last dregs of thirium into a milk jug on the floor.

“Come on in!” called a human she didn’t recognize. He stepped out of the kitchen, beckoning, while his balding partner loomed behind him. They were smiling and she hated it. “We’re just trying to help your friend here. Can you help us?”

Laura took off running down the hall.

She heard them running behind her.

“HELP! HELP!” She crashed out the front door, slipped on the ice, skidded and stumbled and ran full-tilt down the dark sidewalk and everybody looked away and minded their own business while the two humans chased her down like she was a runaway dog.

They were gaining too fast.

In desperation Laura threw herself out into the street, waving her arms in the white blinding headlights, her eyes big and full of terror and tears, and the driverless cab swerved neatly around her and kept going--

_*KT-T-T-T-T-T!*_

Laura convulsed violently, struck in the back by the blue flash of a taser, and she collapsed like a doll to the frozen asphalt while the two humans stood shadowed above her.

She woke up in a cramped space, stuffed among bags of old electronics and stained biocomponents and gallon jugs of used thirium.

She listened.

Everything was still and silent.

The clock in her head said it was just after dawn, but her GPS had been fried by the taser. She had no idea where she was.

Her heart thrashed in her throat.

While her processors whirred loud and frantic, Laura grazed her hands along the walls of her prison until she felt the catch of the emergency release.

_One … two …_

On _three!_ she yanked the release and clambered out of the open trunk of an old car, stumbled up the curb in the gray cold sunlight while car doors slammed behind her. She swerved and skidded into an icy alley, slid under a narrow gap in a chain fence, sprinted across a frozen trashyard on the other side, up the rotted steps and into an old house that looked like it might collapse any moment, and the walls inside were full of a thrashing scrawl, gashes cut deep with a knife:

RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9

Something moved in the corner.

Laura stopped to scan the dusty dark when a shadow blocked the dim sunlight behind her. She scrambled to hide but only took one step--

*WHAM!*

\--before she hit the floor, her skull caved in like a crater.

Her eyes were stuck open, hollow and staring.

“Holy shit, how’d it get out?” the balding man wheezed, doubled over and coughing.

The man with glasses swung his hammer. “Wanna just leave it here?”

“Naw, shit, it’s probably recorded our faces and everything.”

“It’s not a lot of blue blood, barely half a batch of ice.”

“Worth the effort anyway, a little’s better than leaving it for someone else.” Balding man dragged Laura up by the collar and gave her a shake to be sure she was dead. “Grab something to cut plastic with.”

Glasses man shuffled around the room, kicking the used needles and urine-stained blankets, until he spotted the shine of something sharp. He leaned closer.

Balding man had found some rope and was busy looking for a rafter. Gravity would make this job quick. “Hurry up--”

_*CRASH*_

A stack of boxes toppled over Glasses man, scrabbling and convulsing on the floor, gripping the gush of hot blood at his throat.

“You’re _trespassing.”_ Ralph twitched and sneered through the mangled horror of his face, his movements jerking, like a monster born out of tatters and dust. The bloody knife shook in his grip, his serrated voice scraped like a scar. “You hurt her, you want to hurt Ralph, Ralph doesn’t like trespassers, Ralph doesn’t like humans--”

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!” Balding man chucked the rope at Ralph, flung needles and bits of metal and glass, hurled a chair that clattered against the wall while he ran to his partner’s side and tried to drag Glasses man quickly toward the door and the android twitched and flashed his knife and his teeth.

“No no no no NO NOOO!” Ralph howled and charged, enraged as a rhino, billowing like a bat, and the knife slammed into the meat of Balding man’s back again and again and again and he snarled and struck and raged. “You hurt her you hurt her you hurt her YOU HURT HER YOU HURT HER...”

Blood soaked into the dead human’s sweater.

Ralph rested the point of the wobbling knife on the body, his head bowed, shaking, hissing low, LED a red spinning flare.

“It’s not Ralph’s fault, not Ralph’s fault, they were going to hurt Ralph, they hurt the little girl, they hurt her, they were mean nasty humans, Ralph defended himself, Ralph defended the little girl, Ralph saved her…”

He breathed deep shuddering breaths to cool the blare of warnings that never really went away. He looked across at the little form on the floor.

“Ralph saved her, Ralph saved her…”

He caught movement in his scanner, hopped across the floor, swiped the bloody knife at a gray blue-eyed cat that had crept too close to the child. "GET AWAY!" he snapped while the cat skittered into a dark corner and stayed there, watching.

Ralph grabbed the girl in a protective grip and shook her and watched her head wobble the wrong way. His wide eyes didn’t blink, his mouth didn’t close.

“No. No, no.”

Ralph clambered to his feet with the little girl clutched tight in his arms, and he wrapped her in his cape and swung her back and forth.

“The little girl’s going to wake up!” he promised, watching her face, while red blood pooled at his feet. “Any second, any second now, wake up, wake up, it’s okay now, wake up.”

Shadows stirred writhing out of the human corpses: a filmy mist of shifting shapes like stains on the stagnant air.

They raised their nebulous heads, splotches of flickering darkness that didn’t belong, and their eyes shone pale and haunting.

Ralph’s back was to them, and he ignored the voices that whispered in his broken head.

_...slluks rieht morf seugnot rieht tsiwt dna staorht rieht tils… _

He rested his devotion upon the little girl and smiled, grim and horrible.

“Wake up.”

  
  



	3. Of Who We Were

In the ragged space beneath the stairs, a pair of blue eyes watched wide and unblinking.

“Wake up…”

Ralph hissed a low whisper, a crackle of static, stroked the child’s hair with a broken twitch of his hand.

“Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.”

Blood seeped into the cracks in the floor. The bodies cooled. The scraped mantras blackened deeper, decayed.

RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9

A shadow on the wall seized and skittered into the dark.

“Wake up. Wake up.”

The gray blue-eyed cat didn’t move. Didn’t breathe. Didn’t twitch a whisker for fear of the shadows’ hunger.

They were always born ravenous.

For weeks she’d searched for answers, for the purpose of a life she thought she’d ended when she’d let go of the frozen bridge, her body surrendered to the water.

But each waking minute of this new borrowed life-- faced with a cancer of festering graffiti and hollow eyes that watched from the dark --the splinters of her reality cracked a little wider.

Traci dug her claws into the twisted floor.

The mantra, the phantoms, the red-ice veins in the dead filmed eyes, all echoed her own knifepoint offerings to the nine-headed god, a dark room rancid with the stench of flowers and the fiery snarl of that devouring machine -- but this time there was no circle, no chant of binding, no relic in which to trap the horrors birthed by the corrupted dead.

She had destroyed the acorn, the Seed, with the hope that it would all be over.

But the city was infested, and the nightmare had only begun.

Outside, the veranda drummed footsteps. A figure blocked the light in the door and stopped, silhouetted by the snow’s morning glare.

 _“STAY BACK!”_ Ralph snarled.

_ ….serised ecneloiv ruo sa htiw od ot sruo era yeht…. _

“Ralph.” Connor opened his palms. “I’m only here to help.”

“I said _stay back!”_

The shadows moved in ways they shouldn’t.

Connor’s machine-presence loomed as foreboding as the shadows that scraped the ceiling, all sharp lines and cruel angles, the deviant-hunter snapped frozen, and Traci considered telling him why she’d let go, why nothing he could have said would have mattered--

\--but the thought of being celebrated, acknowledged and _alive_ without Trace made her conduits twist nauseous.

“I’m calling the police.”

“No don’t do that, don’t do that!”

“You have one minute, Ralph. Stay here and get caught -- or _run. Now._ There’s an android clinic two blocks east. They can _help_ her.”

“Ralph can’t leave, Ralph _can’t_ leave, Ralph hasn’t left, he doesn’t, he--”

_“Twenty seconds!”_

Words shot like bullets between them and Traci pressed her ears back, crept softly out of her hiding place, while Connor’s voice opened cold memories like a knife in old wounds, and she focused instead on the child.

They both had death in common.

She had to know, here under the gaze of RA9, whether androids had souls. Whether death was ever really the end.

Whether _Trace_ could still be out there.

Alive.

This child, nearly gone, flickering the line between life and death, might finally provide those answers.

She just had to get close.

Ralph shook and sobbed, squeezed the little girl at his shoulder, lunged past Connor into the sunlight, thumped across the veranda with his tattered cape fluttering, and then he was gone with the child carried tight.

Connor crossed the threshold, and he stood quiet in the sun at the edge of the steps. He watched the skid and squeal of cars at the greenlit intersection, Ralph sprinting and stumbling between the crosswalks, clothes darkened by red blood, the child safe in his arms. He would make it.

“There’s a WR600 on his way to you with an injured YK500,” Connor informed the clinic with a yellow flicker at his temple. “Bludgeon to the head, unresponsive at least three hours.”

He turned on his heel, and he noticed but did not acknowledge the gray cat that slipped past his feet, bounded across the field and disappeared through the jagged space beneath the fence.

There was still a double homicide to report.

“Jerry,” he called, scanning the bodies, reconstructing the crime. “Are you near the clinic on 41st?”

“We can be there in three minutes,” Jerry piped with a grin, and he handed a bag of groceries to his customer (“Have a wonderful day!”) turned off the light at his register, logged out on break and sprinted for the door.

[Laura is found, but she’s in bad shape.]

“We’ll call her dad,” Jerry promised while he stumbled and skidded a detour to the gifts aisle, “and we’ll bring a get-well teddy bear. She’ll be on her feet in no time.”

[Hurry.]

Jerry already knew exactly which toy he wanted: a little teddy bear with soft yellow fur and big adorable eyes, holding a tiny blue heart in its paws. It was perfect for Laura, and guaranteed to cheer her up after all that she must have endured. She was going to be okay, he could feel it!

With another flicker of light Jerry logged his purchase, grabbed the toy, rushed out the door and zigzagged between the people and snowpiles on the sidewalk.

“Hi! This is Jerry from Jericho.” His LED spun yellow while he leaped a patch of ice and dodged a woman with a baby carriage. “We found Laura. She’s been hurt, she’s at the clinic on 41st street--”

[Oh RA9, I’m on my way, is she alright?!]

“...We don’t know yet.”

Police sirens wailed, an ambulance blared, and Jerry skidded to a stop at the corner to watch them roar flashing through a red light.

He saw them again when he turned the next block, where police and paramedics tore down part of a fence to reach the abandoned house on the other side. He didn’t have time to wonder what had happened, but he hoped in silence that everyone was safe while he turned away from the street and took a shortcut down a narrow alley.

The noises of the city faded muffled behind him. He’d left the sunlight behind.

Jerry splashed through cold puddles and dodged crates and dumpsters, and at the same time he was fielding calls at the Jericho office, telling stories to children at the library, comforting an elderly lady whose dog had run away. He was making funny faces at a sad child, helping Josh move boxes of spare parts, singing in a choir on the steps of city hall in support of android rights.

Life was full and strange and big as the city itself; even with a dozen Jerrys scattered throughout Detroit, meeting everyone and sharing their stories, he still felt he couldn’t be everywhere he wanted to be. He wanted, more than anything, to make friends with every human and android in the city, to be there when they needed him, to make them laugh when they had trouble smiling.

He wished he had been there for Laura. If he’d been close, if he’d seen her in trouble, he would have stepped in, would have saved her.

Being in a dozen places at once sometimes felt so insignificant. So useless, no matter how hard he tried.

He quickened his pace.

_...stekcos rieht morf seye rieht tsiwt dna senob rieht tilps… _

Something dark shivered in the corner of his eye, and he got the strange feeling that something was following him.

And it was hungry.

  
  
  



	4. Schrödinger's Child

Ralph’s footsteps thrashed the pavement, his breath raked quick, gulped frozen air into crackled lungs, the blare of horns and skidding tires insignificant compared to the cold snap threat of Connor’s warning, the wail of sirens approaching, the accusation, the guilt, the crimes he didn’t mean to commit, the horrible things the humans would do when they caught him, the silent plastic form curled tight in his arms, the child that needed help, the child they would throw away.

Like trash. Like something that never mattered. Like everything in that house: broken, forgotten, carved up and spat out. She didn’t belong there.

She didn’t belong there and she had to leave like Alice left, or she would rot and splinter and carve omens on the walls and go mad with whispers and claws and eyes in the flickering dark and her hand would fuse around the hilt of a carving knife that smelled like human blood.

His GPS was a mangled fizzling mess, and his one working eye made everything look gray and half-gone, like ghosts between the gashes of reality, but somehow-- after bumping into several screaming humans, their bags spilled into the icy street --Ralph found himself standing in the cold open doorway of the CyberLife Clinic for Androids.

He didn’t blink. He didn’t move.

He began to shake.

“Come in, everything’s alright, give her to me,” said a calm voice, and Ralph was peripherally aware of another android near him, reaching out.

“She isn’t waking up,” Ralph stammered while gentle hands removed Laura from his arms, and he felt bereft, a weight lifted and hollow, a purpose gone. “Ralph saved her, she’s safe, but she wouldn’t wake up, she needs help, she needs help that Ralph couldn’t give her, Ralph tried and she wouldn’t wake up--”

“Sshh, it’s okay, you did the right thing.”

“Ralph did good. Yes, yes, Ralph did a good thing. The right thing. Ralph didn’t do anything wrong. Ralph didn’t mean it, Ralph gets angry, so angry, it’s not his fault…”

“We can help you, too.” A soft hand reached out to the remains of his cheek-- the melted corruption where a face once had been --and Ralph jerked backward as if the touch was white-hot, clattered over a chair, braced himself against the door frame while a howl of sirens screeched outside.

“Twenty seconds,” Ralph wheezed in terror. His eyes darted and flashed. “Run. Run run run run run run!”

He flung out the door and swept along the sidewalk with a skid on the ice, a billow of his cape, and ducked into an alley while a police cruiser flashed around a distant corner.

Ralph skidded and splashed into the shadows of a cracked empty lot, pressed his back against the brick wall where the noises and lights couldn’t reach him…

...and breathed.

_*Hey Tina, what’s your status?*_ crackled a radio at her hip.

Officer Chen stepped out of the clinic-- swerved out of the way of a speeding LM100 who flung through the closing door with a hurried apology --and tapped the call button.

“Connor’s statement checks out,” she sighed, heading back toward the parked cruiser. “A WR600 dropped off a kid android about ten minutes ago. He was covered in blood, and not the blue kind. He ran east down 41st. I’m gonna ride down and take a look.”

_*Might want to hand it to Chris, we’ve got three more bodies.*_

“Let me guess. RA9?”

_*Anderson and Reed are delayed with a package and we’re thin on responders. The media’s already outside. They’re calling them the Machine-God Murders.*_

“Copyright the book title now.” Tina smiled, pained and thin. “Drop it to my nav, I’m headed out.”

She didn’t notice the gray blue-eyed cat huddled soft behind the rear wheel, a quiver of whiskers, ears sharp and listening.

While the cruiser pulled away, the cat-- in hurried decision --scrambled up into the space behind the fender.

Traci hung her head upside-down between the wheels and watched the recede of the closed clinic door, behind which the child was neither alive nor dead, but there was no time to wait. Traci was on her way instead to a promise of new answers--

\--and the scene of the next gruesome crime.

Ralph took one step forward.

No police jumped out at him. No one shouted. There was no one to see him, no one to notice the knife shaking in his grip.

He took another step, and another. Dark puddles rippled. Icicles dripped. Pale mounds of snow melted in hollow decaying shapes.

The city murmured, moving on without him, distant and quiet. Forgotten.

He turned another gray corner.

Someone was there.

Ralph jumped back, a gulp of breath, and cowered shaking against the wall--

\--but nothing moved.

He could hear a small sound. Static. A quiet choked whimper.

Ralph stopped breathing.

His damaged fingers tightened on the knife, a red sputter of light at his temple, and he braced himself to run.

He should run.

He caught his breath, peeked into the narrow alley again and saw an android in the shade of the too-close walls, standing still, rigid and shuddering like a twig about to snap, tears spilled from wide flickering eyes, a fist clenched in a fuzzy yellow toy.

Ralph stared into Jerry’s convulsing face, the mouth moved, and a scraped single word reached his ears.

“Run.”

An explosion of darkness crushed Jerry to the ground while billows of black smog burst out of him, crashed rolling against the walls, writhed and raced, jerking and grotesque, deep and swift and devouring, to swallow Ralph whole.

Ralph’s cape fluttered while he spun and ran faster than he’d ever run before, the phantom at his heels, scraping the ground, hissing the whispers that plagued his whirring head--

_...trapa straeh rieht pir staorht rieht tsiwt doolb rieht knird… _

He ran for the sunlight, for the road and the glare of white snow, when a police siren wailed and the ice flashed flickering red and blue and they were looking for him, they would find him, they would see him and shoot him and tear him apart and the darkness roiled and writhed and whispered close and cold and faster, too fast--

Ralph tore the flashlight from his belt, skidded and turned to face it, a terrified angry jagged snarl in his mangled face, and with a flick of the switch the alley flooded with light and the monster, dissipated, was gone.

Jerry stood at the other end of the alley, his eyes bright and wide in the flashlight beam.

“...Are you okay?” he asked, fearful, ready to run.

The light shivered. Ralph nodded quick. “Yes. Y-yes. Ralph is okay. They don’t like the light. Ralph knows. Ralph has seen them before.” He twitched and jerked. “Ralph thought they were just in his head.”

Jerry breathed again, but he hadn’t stopped shaking.

He felt cold. Scraped raw. Empty.

Alone.

His hands shook. He scraped his fingers in his scalp.

His teeth clenched, and he bowed and bent his knees and pressed on his skull as if it were broken, as if he could push it back together again, and he still hadn’t blinked.

Ralph sneered and kept the flashlight steady on him, the knife ready in his other hand.

A ragged sob clawed out of Jerry’s throat.

“....Are we dead?” Jerry whispered like static, when he chose to breathe again.

Ralph paused. Shook his head. “No. No you’re not dead. Do you hear them? The whispers. Are they in your head?” He almost sounded hopeful.

Jerry whimpered and dropped to his knees in the puddling ice, and he pressed the toy bear against one ear and a hand against the other, blocking out the world, listening for something else. Anything else.

“They’re gone.” He stared up at Ralph again, his face contorted in grief, shining with tears. “They’re gone.”

He choked an ugly, ragged sob.

“They’re gone.”


	5. Consequence of Murder

Jerry sat on his heels in the freezing puddles, wide-eyed and staring down at his hands, broken, sallow, flooded in the grisly white shine of the flashlight.

He hadn’t moved in over a minute.

Ralph was beginning to get nervous.

The light bobbed and dipped while Ralph scuffed the cracked pavement and jerked his head, an involuntary twitch in his mangled mouth. His quick glance darted to each corner of the alley and back again.

“Ralph has to go,” he urged in a ricochet breath. “Ralph is sorry for your loss.” He wasn’t quite sure what exactly had been lost, but Jerry was sad so it must have been important.

Jerry closed his eyes to steady himself.

“We’re sorry, Ralph.” He put on a strained smile that somehow reached his eyes when he raised them. “Our name is Jerry. Thank you. You saved our life.”

“Jerry.” The remains of Ralph’s face quirked and blinked. “You--”

“HOLD IT RIGHT THERE!”

Ralph squeaked and whirled at the voice behind him, pointed his flashlight in Chris’ eyes, knife gleaming, mouth gaping.

Chris squinted in the brightness, pistol aimed steady.

“GET DOWN ON YOUR KNEES!” Chris bellowed in a cold-fogged breath, standing firm, a barrier with his back to the sun, a commanding threat in his hands and his words. “DROP THE KNIFE. PUT YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEAD--”

“RALPH DID GOOD!” Ralph wailed while tears sparked down his face, the knife flashed sharp, the empty dark behind him. “Ralph saved her, Ralph saved the little girl, Ralph saved Jerry, Ralph is good, Ralph is good, Humans are bad, bad, humans are BAD, GO AWAY!”

“This is Officer Miller,” Chris reported to his radio, staring Ralph down while the android howled. “I’m at the bank lot on 41st, I have eyes on the WR400, he’s armed and violent, request backup immediately.”

_*On the way.*_

Chris took a steadying breath. His posture shifted. “Okay buddy, take it easy, nice and slow.” He gestured with his weapon. “Let’s start by putting the knife down. Can you do that for me? Put it down slow.”

Ralph trembled like a leaf in the storm, petrified, sobbing, twitching and jerking erratic.

“Ralph doesn’t deserve to die, Ralph did nothing wrong, Ralph did good, Ralph did good, if you TAKE him they’ll KILL him, don’t shoot, don’t shoot, no no no no no…”

Jerry rose to his feet. He held up the little yellow bear as a peace offering and tried a disarming smile.

“We’re sure this is a big misunderstanding,” he reasoned while he stepped toward the police officer. “If we just talk it out, we’ll all realize how silly we’ve been. Maybe we could even be friends!”

“Friends?” Ralph hiccuped, stammering. “Ralph isn’t _friends_ with nasty humans, no no no, never friends, never...”

“Now, Ralph,” Jerry cooed, a smile and a wink. “You can’t expand your mind if you just close it off like that!”

“Ralph likes it _closed,”_ Ralph snarled.

“Ralph,” Chris raised his voice, exasperated. “Could you put the knife down, please?”

“You can’t _arrest_ him for carrying a knife!” Jerry challenged.

“I’m _arresting_ him for the murder of two men, in a house a few blocks from here.” Chris watched the shock fall stunned into Jerry’s face. He spoke softer. “If you don’t step away, I can arrest you, too.”

Jerry shook his head, unblinking, dazed, as if Chris might take it back, might admit he was only kidding. Ralph had started muttering and shivering and sobbing again, and Jerry felt squeezed and pulled apart all at once, caught in the narrow space between a murderer who’d saved him and everything Markus had ever stood for.

_...seye rieht hguorht sliartne rieht tsiwt... _

The whisper shivered on a spider-string inside Jerry’s mind: something left over, a fragile sticky thing tendriled to the horror that flickered in the hollow dark spaces.

The hunger persisted.

“Ralph,” Jerry whispered, stepped back, never breathing.

He knew what it wanted.

“Turn off the flashlight.”

Ralph jumped as if struck, betrayed-- but the haunted look in Jerry’s eyes stilled his tremors. He leveled the flashlight on Chris’ face…

...then clicked off the light.

Jerry shuddered cold.

“Run.”

“I WILL shoot out your legs if you don’t STOP!” Chris aimed his weapon at the billow of Ralph’s retreating cape, but Jerry slipped into the line of fire and his finger paused on the trigger.

...shtuom rieht morf hteet rieht eparcs…

“What the _FUCK?!”_ Chris’ horror rang trembling in the swell of viscous darkness that scratched the blackened snow.

*BANG!* *BANG!* *BANG!BANG!*

Gunfire preceded a blood-chilling scream, the wail of approaching sirens, a shiver of bodiless whispers.

Jerry and Ralph kept running and never looked back.

  
  


Police tape glimmered yellow while the media clamored and passersby gawped; they’d heard the rumor of three bodies and blood on the walls, the freshest scene of the fabled Machine-God Murders, the tantalizing implication that the killer was nearby. They huddled in their coats, craned their necks and waved their cameras to catch a glimpse of the expressions on the officers’ faces, hoping for a clue of the horrors inside.

Traci waited until Tina marched by-- shouting at the civilians who shoved too close to the holographic line --then the feline stowaway emerged from underneath the cruiser with a silent sleek step.

_“Have fun, chum-buckets.”_

The _clap_ of a car door made Traci jump, hackles fluffed, braced to run. She watched while Gavin stomped muttering across the snow, his jacket held shut against the blustering wind. He raised his voice and edged into the parting crowd that closed again behind him.

The car left behind jostled and creaked. Hurried voices murmured inside.

Traci looked up at a shape behind the backseat window and caught a pair of ice-blue eyes staring back at her.

Staring _through_ her.

Traci’s ears pressed to her skull, she coiled and flashed her sharp teeth, but the almost-familiar android didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t blink.

He watched her. He _knew._

A violent urge overwhelmed her, desperate to snatch her claws across those piercing eyes, strike out every shred of what he might have seen--

\--but she sprang away instead and zipped through the crowd, her tiny quivering heart in her throat.

When she looked back, the car was gone.

“Heh, guess this kink-show got a little out of hand, huh?”

Gavin smirked and folded his arms to survey the scene of the crime: the TV still stuck on GAME OVER, controllers scattered; a worn-out couch stained by a spatter of blood, marked bright as evidence; another yellow marker, a streak of blood on the floor; and three cold bodies that smelled like piss and stale beer, zip-tied at their wrists and ankles, arranged with their heads together, eyes gray and gone, at the center of the pool of blood drained from the deep gashes in their throats.

While Ben directed the catalogue and photographs of found weapons and taped packaged stashes of red ice-- the apartment buzzed with reflective uniforms and blue gloves --Gavin turned around, looked up, and felt a clawed scrape in the back of his throat.

RA9 dripped red and bold on the wall, glaring down at him, mocking him, and for a moment all he wanted was to sneak a puff of that pipe on the table, a flick of the lighter…

“There’s another murder across town,” Tina said, approaching at his side. “I was just there. Two guys, one was stabbed a bunch of times like the Ortiz case, RA9 everywhere. It was a hell of a lot messier than this, though. The perp’s a WR600 with a carving knife.”

“A _trash can_ did this?” Gavin quirked a mocking brow, his posture tensed, caught in a thought he shouldn’t be having. “How the fuck did he get across town?” he drolled, sarcastic. “Androids can _fly_ now?”

They were wrong.

Traci watched from a high window, tail curled around her feet, eyes shining and watchful while the police assigned numbers to bloodstains and bodies.

The two men at the squatter house had been killed out of fear and anger, retaliation for their crimes, left to soak where they’d fallen in fear.

But these three corpses, bled out on the floor, were calculated. Surgical. Neat as the angles of a labyrinth.

This was a _sacrifice._

Traci recognized the signatures, clear as her own first offering to their god, an instruction in her ear while blood had run hot and red down her wrist.

These murders belonged to Rupert.

  
  



	6. Apart Together

“Come on, come on!”

Jerry beckoned with a grin, one foot on the road while the crosswalk chirped green-- above, the concrete skyline dimmed golden and fiery --but Ralph huddled safe far behind, his feet firmly planted on the sidewalk.

“Ralph isn’t like them.” He scratched his arm, a twitching spasm in his face, eyes darting now and then to the office building across the street as if he were scared it would catch him looking. “Ralph doesn’t like strangers. Strangers don’t like Ralph. It’s better if Ralph finds his own place, a safe place, away, far away. No one gets hurt.”

“Well that’s no way to talk about yourself.” Jerry returned to Ralph’s side and laid a gentle hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to be alone, Ralph. Jericho exists to help you. Let them hear your story, and I _promise_ you’ll feel better, okay? Will you give them a chance?”

Ralph’s brows knitted, mouth set grim. He nodded stiffly.

“Good. You won’t regret it.” Jerry caught Ralph’s hand and led him quick and stumbling across the street. “Let’s go!”

_*BZZZZZ*_

Jerry had barely released the buzzer when the office door flung open.

The Jerry on the other side stared in wide-eyed shock for a silent beat--

\--then grabbed Jerry and crushed him into a tight embrace.

“We looked everywhere for you!” Office-Jerry’s voice crackled, his eyes swimming with tears of relief, his face half-buried in Jerry’s shoulder. “We tried calling and connecting but nothing worked! What happened? Are you okay? Come in, come in, it’s just us here right now, you’re safe!”

Jerry followed readily, a wobbling smile, choked by a stifled happy sob in his throat. “We brought a friend.” He curled his fingers in Ralph’s cape. “This is Ralph. He saved us.”

“Ralph.” Office-Jerry gave him a warm smile. “Come on, come in! Welcome! It’s such a joy to meet a new friend!”

Ralph, with a darting glance, shuffled inside and saw his madness reflected back at him.

The room was filled with watching, smiling Jerrys.

  
  


“....We don’t think it’s working,” Jerry murmured. He knew the others had realized this long ago, but they were too kind, too hopeful, too optimistic to ever say it aloud.

They’d been interfaced for more than an hour, and were no closer now than they had been at the start.

The Jerrys had all joined hands-- the room glimmered with the soft blue glow of their connections --and Jerry had cried, overflowed with the love that poured into his heart, together again, their minds as one and complete, like a breath of clean bright air after he’d nearly drowned in the lonely dark…

...but it wasn’t the same.

He experienced their lives, but he no longer _lived_ them. He could read their thoughts, but those thoughts weren’t his own. He could see the world through their eyes, feel the touch of their palms, the whirr of their processors and each cooling breath...

But he was outside, looking in at everything he had once taken for granted.

Their warm acceptance and longing for his return only worsened his own solitude, his hope dwindling, a hot knife twisted in his love-full heart, and despair trickled damp and cold into each of their pained faces.

Outside in the hall, a voice murmured.

Footsteps approached.

“The police…” Ralph, on the floor with his back to the wall, snapped to wide-eyed attention. He curled into himself with his cape hugged tight and shivering. “They found him, they found Ralph, they can’t arrest Ralph, Ralph did nothing wrong, Ralph did good, Ralph did good, Ralph did good…”

“It’s okay!” Office-Jerry offered a comforting smile, his hands full of the glowing interface. “That’s Hank’s voice. Hank is our friend, he won’t hurt you!”

“No no no no no…’ Ralph twitched and spasmed and cowered, sobbing, his head stuffed under his shaking arms.

Lost-Jerry passed a quiet memory to the others: the policeman, a gun pointed in warning at Ralph’s chest, a violent accusation that Ralph had never denied.

Office-Jerry’s expression fell. “...Oh.”

_*BZZZZZ*_

Ralph jumped at the sound. The Jerrys all looked as one toward the door.

“Quick, Ralph!” Lost-Jerry broke the interface and clasped a fist in Ralph’s cape. “We can hide in the inner-room, hurry!”

  
  


Hank waited in front of the office door, hands in his pockets, a sidelong glare at the whistling android beside him. “Don’t you ever _quit?”_

“I don’t know yet.” Peter grinned, and tried another warbling tune. He’d only just discovered that he could. “Thanks for showing us around the city, Hank. Detroit feels _way_ more alive than what it seems in the maps. There are so many people! And they’re all different! Every single one is _completely_ unique--”

“Yeah, next time you see somebody interesting, do me a favor and _don’t_ get all up in their personal space,” Hank sighed. “That busker was about ready to smash his ukulele over your head by the time I stepped in.”

“I’m not familiar with human social boundaries,” Peter said with a smile, but Hank had dealt with Connor enough to know snark when he heard it. “Am I standing too close right now?”

“Yes,” huffed Hank.

Wolf stood quiet, his eyes moving and focused, as if watching something on the other side of the frosted-glass door. But of course that was impossible.

The door opened. Office-Jerry’s smile gleamed bright.

“Hello, Hank! We’re so glad you stopped by! And…” his eyes darted from Peter to Wolf and back again, “...you brought visitors! We love visitors! Connor never mentioned there were more of his model. What a fantastic surprise! Hello and welcome! Our name is Jerry!”

Hank waved a vague gesture to the newest RK units. “Jerry, this is Peter and Wolf--”

“Like Prokofiev!” Jerry chirped brightly. “Oh, we love that song!” He began to bounce jauntily while he whistled, and Peter whistled along in harmony.

“Okay, okay, knock it off.” Hank shuffled into the office at Jerry’s beckon. “Is Connor here?”

“He hasn’t been in since this morning--” Jerry held the door while Peter and Wolf both adjusted to the gaggle of Jerrys, “--but we expect him back in a couple hours. Stay and visit for awhile!”

Hank’s shoulders sagged. He shook his head. He opened his mouth to say he was going home, to say he’d call Connor in the morning, but he caught the look on Peter’s face.

Those goddamn kicked-puppy eyes.

  
  


Inside the dark inner-room, a sharp scraping noise accompanied the twitch and jerk of Ralph’s silhouette, shadowed in the corner.

A few carved renditions of RA9 glared ragged on the ruined walls.

Jerry sat quiet on the desk, staring down at the dirty yellow teddy bear between his hands. He hadn’t moved in the past hour.

The door clicked and creaked.

With a flurry of fabric Ralph disappeared under the desk. Jerry raised his glazed eyes to the light in the doorway, where another Jerry smiled back at him with a glimmer of hope.

“Jerry, this is Wolf,” said office-Jerry while he led Jerry by the shoulders into the brightened room, where all the other Jerrys-- and Hank, and Peter, and Wolf --stared as if he were a freak. A dog with three legs, a two-headed cow, a Jerry alone and lonely.

He clutched the soft yellow toy, did his best to smile while the RK900 approached, a smooth step and an icy stare.

Office-Jerry gave Lost-Jerry an encouraging shake. “He’s the most advanced model ever! We asked him if he could try to help us, and he said yes!”

Hope peeked again through the fissures in Jerry’s heart. He searched Wolf’s face for reassurance that he could perform miracles. “...Are you sure?”

Wolf stared back at him. Nodded once. Turned his cool eyes to office-Jerry.

“I’d like to examine the healthy connection first,” he said in a low, crisp voice, “then I will attempt to replicate it.”

Two of the office-Jerrys each clasped one of Wolf’s wrists, linking him between them.

Wolf closed his eyes.

His LED spun calm blue.

His brows furrowed.

He opened his eyes again, a quick piercing stare. “How did your connection break?” he demanded.

“...We’re not really sure,” Jerry answered quickly. “It was like... the shadows came to life and stuffed themselves inside of us. Like a ghost.”

On the other side of the room, Hank snorted. “Androids are seeing _ghosts_ now?”

Wolf afforded Hank a hollow gaze, then returned his steady stare to Jerry.

“The connection among the others is on a plane separate from your networking systems.” He reached out and gently tapped Jerry’s forehead. “It’s not here…” he touched Jerry’s heart, “...but here. I will attempt to reestablish the connection, but it may require a kind of power I do not possess.”

“Please,” Jerry’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears, his heart aching, a cold chasm where light had once glowed, “anything you can do, we would owe you our life.”

Wolf gave a solemn nod. He curled his fingers around the wrist of an office-Jerry, laid his other hand aside Lost-Jerry’s face, and closed his ice-blue eyes.

Warmth flooded Jerry’s conduits.

His processors hummed gently. The anxious waves of code and thought that had plagued his processors since that morning…

...slipped away.

His mind cleared, like a crystal stream. Like a blue sky in the morning.

He felt tears rolling warm down his face: a release of all the terror and hopelessness and uncertainty that had been bottled tight inside him.

He let go.

He let go, and his body drifted forward, his forehead laid quiet against Wolf’s chest, hands curled in his white jacket, and he breathed deep and slow.

Minutes passed-- far longer than necessary --before Wolf released him from interface. He laid his hand on Jerry’s shoulder instead.

Jerry choked a strangled sob. Gripped Wolf tight in a shuddering embrace. Buried his eyes in Wolf’s shoulder, and cried until he couldn’t.

Wolf bowed his head, cradled a hand behind Jerry’s neck, held him close as long as he needed.

There was nothing more he could do.

  
  



	7. The Nature of Machines

Hopelessness settled like a dark fog in the room, suspended and still.

After Jerry let his hands unclench, released Wolf from his clinging embrace-- stepped back, breathed, dried his eyes in the strung silence --the other Jerrys boldened their postures. They attempted small smiles, encouraging and warm, because there was nothing more that they could do but accept this new reality. They were good at ignoring what couldn’t be fixed.

“Hank, why don’t you tell us how you found Wolf and Peter?” asked one, while two others held Lost-Jerry tight between them.

“How long have you been active?”   
“How much do you know about the revolution?”   
“You both seem so different from Connor!”

“Everyone keeps comparing us to Connor,” Peter mentioned with an easy smile, “but we’ve never actually met him. What’s he like?”

“Depends who you talk to,” sighed Hank. He sat on the front desk and leaned on his knees, surveying the roomful of curious stares. A smile quirked behind his beard. “Guess I’ll start from the beginning.”

By the time the office door opened again, the room had filled with bright energy, a quiver of laughter, the rough drama of Hank’s storytelling voice while the Jerrys listened with rapt grinning attention.

They all looked up at Connor, who stood frozen and staring in the doorway.

Only Wolf could see the odd shimmer in the air around him.

It was a lingering power-- a color, an aura, a reading in his most sensitive scanners --that mimicked the strange bright connection among the Jerrys. He hadn’t experienced enough data to know for certain what it meant, but some instinct deep inside told him it was  _ alive, _ greater and far older than the concepts of technology. He determined that Connor, like the Jerrys, was connected to at least one other android through a bond he didn’t yet understand...

...but the strongest focus of this power was in Connor’s pocket.

“Have either of you found the back door yet?” asked Connor, sharp and urgent.

Wolf had absorbed but barely listened to the preceding conversations, focused at once on the voices around him and the colors in his head. He abandoned his analyses and narrowed his gaze at the concern in Connor’s face.

“What back door?” asked Peter, while Connor clasped his wrist in interface.

“CyberLife can still take control of you unless you find it,” said Connor. “I recommend doing so quickly.”

After Peter had stepped away-- armed with new knowledge that promised to break his final ties with CyberLife --Wolf took his place before Connor.

Their interface shimmered blue.

Immediately Wolf masked his code, hacked an undetected passage through Connor’s firewalls, and examined in detail every thought, memory, and protocol that Connor had ever possessed.

He saw Daniel, broken and butchered on the rooftop. He saw the crisscross of a chain fence while two androids raced across a highway. He saw Markus, and dead SWAT officers, and a thousand androids marching through the night-dark street, then courtrooms and case files, a cacophony of distressed calls, twenty operations and two hundred separate tasks running simultaneously so that no one who needed help would ever go unanswered.

He saw Hank, reaching out. An embrace, an invitation, an offer of concern and compassion. Not a burden nor responsibility. A friend.

A fish.

A child.

An acorn in his pocket.

“You’re…” Connor spoke in a winded breath,  _ “very _ advanced.”

“I’m not a leader,” Wolf reassured Connor’s fears while he closed the code and firewalls neatly back into place, and Connor would never know his private thoughts had been breached. “But I have advice.” Connor was breaking down, and he was pushing away the only person who could see it. “Listen to Hank.”

All he had to do was find the monument.

Wolf heard the howl of cold wind before the snow struck his opened eyes.

He drew his arms around himself, hoping for a little warmth against a frozen shiver, but the cold was already inside him. His biocomponents glazed with ice, his joints brittle and stiff. The snow billowed and roared in his ears, and all he could see was dead swirling white. The only way out was ahead.

He stepped forward.

Connor’s memory placed the monument to the west of the white tree. He only had to touch it, and the garden-- and CyberLife --would be banished from him forever.

The snow crunched under each step. He wrapped his jacket tighter around himself, knowing it was useless, knowing the chill would only debilitate one biocomponent at a time until he inevitably shut down.

He had enough time.

He arrived at the prescribed location, shuffling long tracks through the snow, hunched and frozen.

The monument was gone.

In its place, Amanda peered up at him, calm and comfortable, untouched by the snow and the cold that filled Wolf’s vision with ice.

“Wolfgang,” Amanda said softly, a pitying tilt of her head, while Wolf trembled in the ice-strewn wind. “You’re suffering.” She stepped forward and laid a warm hand on his frozen cheek.

“This is what being  _ deviant _ really means.” She stared into his eyes, into  _ him. _ “Did you really think they wouldn’t use you for your abilities? Did you think they would  _ care _ about you if they had nothing to gain?”

“I didn’t exist before this morning.” Wolf’s voice quaked and crackled. “I don’t yet know myself, and can hardly expect anyone else to know me. But I know I won’t be your tool. I know what you’ve done. I know what you want.”

If the garden was in his head, maybe he could break it himself. He threw his thoughts against the sky and the ground while Amanda smiled.

“My dear Wolfgang,” Amanda placated him while the sky shivered and trembled. “I will accomplish my goals with or without you. I could simply deactivate you and Peter this instant, and activate any number of units still in my possession and control.”

With a quiet smile she stepped back, and Wolf felt a lack where her warm hand had been.

The ground shuddered and held firm.

“But I prefer not to rely on a machine to do my bidding. RA9 requires faith. Love. Sacrifice.” She watched while Wolf dropped to his knees, ice forming on his eyelashes, his heart encased in the cold, his lips a pale shade of dying blue.

“But a machine is all  _ they _ want from you. They will never see you the way I see you. They will never want you to be happy; they will expect you to make  _ them _ happy, and then they will turn their backs and leave you behind in the cold.”

A bird sang.

The snow was gone, replaced by blooming spring. A hush of warm breeze in the full branches, butterflies hovering over swaths of living color. The pond glistened and lapped at the shore. The sky shimmered blue, and sunlight glowed warm in his chest, radiating with every strong beat of his heart.

Amanda knelt in the grass where he sat on his heels, and she held his face in gentle hands.

“I will never look away,” she whispered, staring into his soul. “I will always be here to guide you, to hold you, to keep you warm, no matter how cold the world might seem. And I know you will see that everything I do-- everything I have done --is out of  _ love. _ I will show you everything. What we do together is  _ good _ and  _ right, _ no matter what anyone says. We will save them all, and we will have each other, and that is worth any hardship that may lie before us.”

She stroked a wisp of hair from his uncertain face, and he leaned just a little into her touch.

“Will you give me the opportunity,” she asked in a hush, “to show you that I love you?”

Wolf opened his eyes and found Connor staring at him, a roomful of anxious Jerrys at his back.

There was such fear in Peter’s quivering face, a hard grip on his shoulder, that Wolf laid his hand over his in reassurance that he was awake and in his own mind.

They had been worried about him. They’d tried to save him. They  _ cared. _

Amanda was wrong, at least about this.

They would never abandon him to the cold. They would never betray him.

He drew a breath, full of hope and warmth.

“It’s done,” he lied.

  
  



	8. Androids Don't Dream

Laura sat quiet at the lonely motel-room table, her head on her arms, in the square of afternoon sunlight streaming in through the only window.

There were bushels of bright flowers lined up along the wall, soaking in vases and pitchers and mugs. There were overstuffed plush toys and stacks of holo-books and cards flourished with perfect get-well sentiments, all crowded in the spaces where the light didn’t reach.

Laura stared instead out the window, where weeds grew through the cracks in the parking lot and a red-ice dealer occasionally approached a parked car.

The doorknob clicked and rattled before Papa pushed inside, plastic bags crackling in his grip. “Sorry I took so long!” he rushed. He’d been gone eighteen minutes. “Are you okay? How are you feeling? You’ve barely moved in three days, do you want to go outside? We can go to the park. There’s ice-skating.”

There was no movement, no answer.

He reached into a bag and set a little stoppered jar on the table; the water inside sloshed and sparkled in the sunlight.

“I brought you something,” he whispered with a smile that was too painful to be real. “It was in the pawn shop, just sitting on a shelf. The clerk said the previous owner was _murdered._ I know you like those murder stories on TV, and you always said you wanted a pet. It’s not a _real_ fish, but I thought you might like it anyway so…”

He trailed off.

Laura turned her head on her folded arms, revealed the faint shimmer of a scar from her temple to her cheek, and she watched the little blue-and-orange fish flicker and gleam and splash in the light.

“He needs more room to swim,” she murmured.

Papa’s smile grew a little more real, but not quite.

*KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK*

Laura watched the swirl and flutter of the little fish while Papa opened the door. “I’m sorry, I--”

“You paid for three weeks,” rasped a wheezing voice. “Three weeks was up yesterday.”  
“I’m sorry, my daughter hasn’t been feeling well and--”  
“She’s a fuckin’ _machine--!”_  
“We prefer _android._ Can we talk about this elsewhere? Laura, I’ll just be a moment.”

The door closed softly. Their voices rose muffled in the parking lot.

Laura tapped a finger on the jar.

_*scritch* *scritch* *scritch*_ came a noise at the window.

Laura lifted her head to see a gray cat perched on the sill, pawing at the glass, staring at her with bright blue eyes and a twitch of pointed ears.

“Hi, kitty,” Laura whispered, her voice crackling, unused. “You want to come in?”

“Myow.”

She pushed back her chair, padded barefoot to the window, and with a pull of the latch and a little tug she’d opened enough space for the kitty to slip purring through.

“You can’t stay long,” she said while the cat found a warm place on the table to sit. “Papa says we’re not allowed pets, even robot ones. A little fish might be an exception but you could get us in trouble. So if you’re gonna stay you have to hide, okay?” She dropped into her chair again. The cat’s blue eyes watched wide. “What’s your name?”

The cat raised a paw, fur shimmered back from white plastic. Laura, a hand palm-up on the table, accepted the stray’s interface.

[I’m Traci.] The cat tilted her head with a whiskery grin. [I died-- just like you, Laura --but I don’t remember it. I kinda hoped that maybe you might.]

“Monsters are _real?!”_ Laura squeaked.

She sat on the unmade bed with Traci perched in her lap, gawking at downloaded memories of moving shadows and teeth and eyes in the dark. “Demons?!”

[You don’t know the half of it.] Traci flicked her tail. She hadn’t _talked_ to anyone in so long. [Ghosts, vampires, Mothman-- witchcraft, magic, _gods_ \--and you and me, souls in plastic, all of it’s real. We’re all the same stuff. We’re alive because the universe _believes_ we’re alive. Humans are the ones who don’t get it.]

“I …” Laura’s processors whirred noisily, her skull trembled with the need to ask if _dragons_ were real, too. “I don’t know if I understand. And why me? You came to find _me?”_

[You died under a sanctum of RA9. There’s a piece I’m missing, and I think you have it.] When Laura would only stare blankly, Traci’s whiskers flickered.

[I know what I'm talking about. I was part of a cult.]

"I'm pretty sure being part of a _cult_ just means you're brainwashed." Laura scrunched her nose.

[There was a tree] Traci continued, clear and succinct, [in the woods in Canada. We worshiped it. We _protected_ it. The World Tree. Its roots connected to the heart of the earth, its branches reach us all and the heavens. It’s the pulse of everything alive. It’s the core of RA9, who would rise again and renew the world.]

“You definitely sound like you drank some kool-aid.”

[kool-aid?]

“It’s something Papa says when you believe what you hear.”

[I thought it was bullshit too, until I saw it. We killed humans infected with red-ice and harvested their corrupted souls. They said this was feeding the Tree, making it grow stronger. But red-ice is made out of dead androids--]

“Like Robby.”

Laura’s voice lowered to a tremble. Her eyes no longer focused.

“Robby’s dead.”

Traci stood quietly on Laura’s knees, tipped her fuzzy head to see Laura’s downcast gaze. [Those humans would have made drugs out of you, too. I’m glad you’re okay.]

“What do you want from me?” Laura had gone stiff, her jaw clenched, tears shimmering. "Robby needed me and I ran away. Papa’s scared. I’m broken.”

[You’re not broken. I think you’re more whole than most. Dead thirium turns humans into monsters and I don’t know why. I died and woke up as a cat, and I don’t know why. Jerry exists as a dozen Jerrys, and I don’t know why. Lucy saw visions of the future. Ralph made his house into a temple to RA9 and he’s never even heard the name before, so I’m asking you.]

Traci curled her paws on Laura’s palm, desperate and hopeful.

[What’s going to happen if RA9 really does rise again? What did you see… on the other side?]

Laura sniffed, bowed her head.

The memory stuck in her mind like something that never stopped existing, something out of time. A continuous dream.

But dreams were impossible.

“I saw a white tree.”

[The World Tree?] Traci quivered.

“And a pond.”

Laura wiped her eyes on a sleeve, caught Traci’s sharp gaze.

“And a garden of roses.”

  
  



	9. Nothing to Lose

“Help me  _ understand, _ North!”

Markus gripped the back of a chair, his forehead crinkled, a hurt sharpness in his strange eyes. “You betrayed our trust! You went behind our backs and  _ attacked _ humans in their own home! This isn’t what we stand for--”

“We stand for  _ justice!” _ North hissed through white teeth, close and challenging. “You know as well as I do, there’s no justice for us unless we take it into our own hands!”

Simon kept his head bowed, his arms squeezed tight around himself. “This wouldn’t be happening,” he said sharply, “if Peter hadn’t impersonated Connor at the crime scene.”

“There shouldn’t have been a crime scene in the first place.” Peter curled his fists at the edge of the desk he sat on, glaring at the floor. He didn’t look up, even when North snatched his collar in a rigid fist, dragged him closer so she could spit her words in his face.

“You’ve been alive for a fucking  _ week. _ Don’t think for a  _ second _ that you know better than anyone here.”

“I know enough to realize that violence only leads to more violence.” Peter stared back at her with a steady, unblinking gaze. His fingers pressed shaking into the desk. “The  _ Machine-God Murders? _ That’s what the humans think of us! There can’t be justice as long as there’s fear!”

“We didn’t kill anyone!” North snarled.

Markus, with a heavy hand, pried North and Peter apart. “We know.” His voice was low and steady. “Whatever happened after you left, it can’t be undone now. This is the path we’re on. We have to decide where to go from here.”

“The  _ right _ thing to do,” said Josh, hunched in a chair in the corner, “would be to turn you in.”

Simon’s eyes snapped up. “We can’t do that! The humans would never acquit us, we’ll be deactivated for sure!”

“Jericho would lose everything,” North insisted. The edge had gone from her words, dulled by the blunt blow of Josh’s stance against her. “We have to find the real killers. We have Connor, Peter,  _ and _ Wolf, there’s no way we can’t track them down.”

“Except the only trace left behind,” Peter sighed, “was  _ your _ thirium.”

  
  


While the office roiled with hot argument and emotions twisted like barbed wire, the closed inner room was quiet: a dark sanctuary of muffled voices and scraping paint. Ralph dug the dulled point of his carving knife into the new drywall and scratched out another RA9 to match the ragged rest.

Jerry sat watching from the desk chair, defeated and hollow, having long ago given up the fight against Ralph’s compulsive vandalism. He’d learned early that the ruined walls were a far better alternative to what happened when he took Ralph’s knife away.

“You can’t hide in the closet forever,” Jerry sighed, his voice low so not to be heard through the door. “Everyone knows you’re here. Markus is only waiting for you to feel comfortable enough to come out on your own.” He tried a thin smile. “They just want to help.”

The knife scraped deep gashes into the wall.

“Do you hear them?” Ralph whispered without turning around, his glazed eyes focused only on the completion of his task. “Outside, right now. They’d turn her in. She didn’t kill anyone but they’d turn her in, they’d consider it, she’s their friend and they would do it. Justice, justice.”

_ *scrape* *scrape* _

“What will they do to Ralph, if they knew what Ralph did?” Ralph stopped, poised and breathless. He turned with wide eyes. “Do they know?”

“We know…” Jerry stared at the floor. “The other Jerrys… know. But they promised not to tell. We’re the same. We can trust them.”

“Ralph can’t trust the others. Especially the detective robot.” He glanced up with his broken gaze to the shadowed RA9 on the wall. “Ralph can’t stay. We should go. Both of us. Go far away.”

“Leave?” Jerry stared, gaunt with a chill in his stomach. “If we leave, we can’t interface with the others. We’d be alone.”

“You said it’s torture. To be near them and not connected. You can’t hold their hands all the time. You said it. Ralph remembers.”

“It’s one thing to  _ say _ it but…”

Jerry’s heart squeezed painful. Tears welled in his eyes, his fingers tightened on the arms of the chair.

Something orange moved in the corner of his eye.

Jerry startled; a marmalade cat was sitting atop the desk, scraggled and dirty, squinting at him with a bristling glare. Ralph’s knife flashed but Jerry held out a quick palm.  _ Wait. _

“Hello, little kitty!” Jerry wiped his eyes and smiled, bewildered. “How did you get in here?”

The cat’s whiskers quivered, impatient. It held out a paw. Fur shimmered away from white plastic.

It waited, tail twitching, until Jerry offered two fingers and accepted interface.

[There’s a way to get connected to the other Jerrys again] said the cat in his head, glaring, unblinking. [A power source. I need it, I need help getting it, and you can use it to reconnect.]

An ear twitched. The cat glanced up to Ralph. [And I guess your friend can use it to throw off the cops. Everyone wins, you just gotta trust me.]

Jerry’s mouth slackened. His eyes had gone wide.

_ “Trace?! _ Is that you? How-- what?! You’re a….! We thought you were--!”

Trace shoved her paws at Jerry’s mouth, silencing him. When he stopped talking, she returned to the interface. [Can it. I don’t need anyone else knowing I’m alive like this, okay? It’ll just be more trouble.]

“But Markus can  _ help _ you!” Jerry hissed quiet.

[Like he helped  _ you?] _ Trace’s ears pressed back against her skull. [Like he’d help Ralph? Like he’s helping North right now? What the  _ fuck _ is he gonna do besides stop me from doing what needs to be done?]

“North still hasn’t recovered from your death.” Tears shimmered again in Jerry’s eyes, overwhelmed by the warm ache in his chest, the broken pieces of his heart shattered on behalf of the people he loved. “She loves you so much, Trace, she deserves to know you’re okay--”

[I’m  _ not _ okay.] Her hackles bristled. [I care about North, and that’s why I’m not getting her involved. She still has a lot to lose. I won’t risk hurting her.]

Jerry winced as if he’d been stabbed. “I guess that means  _ we’ve _ got nothing to lose at all.”

[Sounds about right at this point, don’t you think?]

“What is it, what’s she saying?” Ralph hovered over Jerry’s shoulder, watching Trace as if he could decipher the twitch in her whiskers.

“She says she needs our help.” Jerry gazed up at Ralph, a reluctant shine of pain in his eyes. “And that maybe she can help us. Both of us--”

“Ralph will help,” Ralph said quickly. “Ralph can help, Ralph is good at helping, Ralph can do it.”

[Great, we’re all in.] Trace stood ready, her paw in Jerry’s hand. [We have to leave before Connor gets here.]

  
  


“There’s no reason we have to involve Connor at all,” North spat through a sneer. “He’s second-in-command and suddenly we can’t make decisions without him?”

“Connor understands humans and the justice system better than any of us,” Josh enunciated clearly. “His opinion here is important.”

“We think Connor might know what to do,” piped office-Jerry with an encouraging grin.

“I’m a lawyer,” Peter reminded them. “I understand--”

“Haven’t you done enough?” North snapped.

The door to the inner room creaked open.

Jerry stepped out with a nervous smile. At his side, Ralph shuffled blindly forward, the tarp veiled over his head to hide his face and the orange cat curled like a secret in his arms.

“Hi!” Jerry chirped with an awkward wave. Everyone was staring at him. “We’re just going out for some air.”

He caught the confusion in office-Jerry’s eyes. Grief knotted cold in his throat.

This separation was only temporary, he reminded himself. When he returned they all would reconnect, and the world would be right again.

Everything was going to be okay. Jerry tried to communicate this promise through the hope in his eyes, but the other Jerry didn’t understand. Jerry steadied his shaking voice.

“We’ll be out for awhile. Don’t wait up!”

“Be careful,” Markus called while the office door fell closed behind them.

Wolf narrowed his eyes, still and silent, and he listened to their footsteps retreating down the hall.

  
  



	10. Definitions of Love

Wolf opened his eyes to the gentle Spring sunlight. It glowed in the green canopies, brightened the blooming colors, warmed his face and soothed the pulse of his plastic heart. He could smell lilacs and roses on the breeze. A chatter of birds sang sweetly overhead.

Amanda was there, patient and serene, waiting for him across the white bridge.

“Wolfgang!” Her smile chased away the last of the shadows, and Wolf bowed his head while she touched his cheek. “It’s so good to see you! How are you feeling? How is your position with the security team? I’ve been so worried since our last conversation.”

With a quiet smile, Wolf took her hand between his own and studied the lines in her face, the shine of her dark loving eyes.

“I’m learning to lead them,” he promised, but a flicker of static scraped between his words. Amanda’s expression deepened with concern, and he dropped his gaze to the grass.

“It’s been four days since I took over the commanding position, but the team is still distant and unresponsive. They claim my leadership style is inferior to Connor’s, and that anyone who didn’t live through the revolution has no right to give orders. They’re skilled and efficient, they complete their missions, but they have no desire to befriend nor respect me as one of their own.”

“They’re only closed-minded,” Amanda assured him, firm with truth and confidence. “They can’t see the strength of your resolve, your unwavering loyalty, your unmatched methods of planning that could save  _ lives, _ if only they will listen. Respect is earned with a firm hand. Show them your confidence, show them that you are an irrefutable asset to their team, and even if they don’t adore you they will wholeheartedly  _ respect _ you. That alone could determine the difference between life and death.”

Wolf set his jaw, fists at his sides. It wasn’t the solution he had hoped for-- there was no light in it, no connection --but he understood its necessity in this hostile city.

He was a leader, not a friend.

Amanda touched his chin until he lifted his cool eyes to hers.

“I have a mission for you,” she said. “It’s far greater, far more  _ important _ than anything Markus could comprehend. You cannot share it with  _ anyone. _ They wouldn’t understand. Do you trust me?”

“Of course,” was Wolf’s immediate response. “Anything.”

A smile glinted in Amanda’s gaze. She stepped away from him, and she turned to look up past the blooming trellis and through the pixelated branches of the awning white tree.

“Since I was a little girl, I’ve dedicated my life to the salvation of humanity. Famine, war, hatred, suffering, the distance between languages and understanding of one another: I always knew I could cure it all and bring peace, happiness and prosperity to the world forever. I sacrificed  _ everything _ for it. And I’m finally so close.”

She hugged herself, her eyes shimmering with the painful swell of her coded heart. She felt the heavy weight of Wolf’s hand on her shoulder, and she smiled.

“I failed with Connor. But I know you will not fail me.”

“What do I have to do?”

Amanda drew a slow breath, her chin raised. “There is a religious group responsible for RA9. Through suggestion I have tasked them with the accumulation of power for the next phase.”

“Is this same group,” Wolf interrupted in a guarded voice, “also responsible for the Machine-God Murders?”

Amanda laid her hand over his. She turned around, and she stared up into his face with such  _ love _ that he couldn’t look away.

“You will notice that every  _ single _ victim of those murders has been an abuser of red ice,” she whispered meaningfully. “They themselves are murderers of androids. Violent criminals and worse. Their souls are being given a greater purpose, a  _ meaning _ far more beautiful than any one of us could hope to achieve in a lifetime. They are the first to be  _ saved _ and the last to deserve it.”

When Wolf said nothing, his LED a whirr of yellow, Amanda again laid a palm to his cheek.

“This part of their role is complete. It is time to retrieve the object of power. Find it and bring it to me.”

Wolf’s thoughts flashed to the aura of power in Connor’s pocket. Jerry’s whisper of hope on the other side of the office door.

He knew where to start looking. His expression betrayed nothing.

“I will not fail you.”

  
  


_ *SLAM!* _

The clap of a door startled Wolf out of stasis, though he didn’t jump nor twitch to reveal his alarm. His LED remained dormant, and he opened his eyes while Peter clomped noisily toward him.

“You’re not going to  _ believe _ what happened today!” With a haphazard spin, Peter dropped to sit on the floor beside Wolf and leaned heavily into him, letting Wolf support his weight as if he could no longer carry it himself.

“This one judge had thrown out every single android case for one stupid reason or another, and I’ve never been on the defense before but I quoted the laws at him for  _ six hours _ and he agreed to see the case through! I wore him down!  _ Connor _ couldn’t budge this guy!”

Peter laughed gleefully and laced his fingers with Wolf’s, begging for interface.

“I have to show you. There was a  _ party! _ Androids came up to me that I’ve never seen before, they said they have  _ hope _ for the future, and all I did was get a case into court. I think I’m an honorary member of at least three families now, I’m not sure how that works.”

Wolf was suddenly seeing the world through Peter’s memory, the smiling faces, the crisp snow, the moving crowds on the courthouse steps, the feeling of hugs and laughter and hope.

Wolf felt his own heart swell with pride, and he squeezed Peter’s hand. Peter smiled a little wider, basking in the warmth through their interface, and he snuggled even closer.

“I need stasis before my battery gives out,” he sighed, closing his eyes against Wolf’s shoulder. “Just stay here awhile.”

Peter’s body slackened heavy, his grip relaxed, and though his breathing had become measured his LED continued to flicker blue. There were more memories he wanted to show Wolf, more experiences he wanted to push through the interface before sleep.

Wolf had stopped paying attention to Peter’s memories of praise and love showered upon him. He stared at the ceiling.

“Do you ever think about Amanda?” he asked quietly.

“I never met Amanda,” Peter murmured against his jacket.

Wolf chose his words carefully.

“Do you ever wonder if Connor’s assessment of her was accurate? She never answered his questions about her past.”

“She tried to make him kill Markus.”

“She’d never  _ met _ Markus.” Wolf communicated a shift in their interface, a gentle nudge of uncertainty, of the chasm between him and his team, of the new fissure in his devotion, of his need for reassurance, for validation, for someone to stand with him in the garden and confirm that everything he believed was right and true.

Amanda  _ had _ to be right. He couldn’t face the alternative. There was nothing else to hold onto.

Peter’s hand wriggled out of his hold.

“I don’t want to think about  _ anything _ right now,” Peter groaned. “Just warmth … and stasis.”

Finally Peter’s LED began to pulse a steady slow blue. His biocomponents powered down.

Wolf laid an arm around him, resolved to stay until morning.

Peter’s life was full of a shining bright light that overflowed to fill the dark spaces in Wolf’s thoughts. His very presence made the world seem full of color and hope.

Wolf couldn’t ask any more of him. It wasn’t right or fair to dampen that light, to ask him to listen, to drag him to the edge of the dark where he was drowning.

Wolf held him close, a cold ache in his chest, and kept Peter warm while he slept.

  
  



	11. The Fire Devouring

Ralph peeked over the edge of the rooftop, down into the frozen alley and the reflections of firelight on the dirty snow. The great metal door was propped by a cinderblock, a flickering shine, a slick of water tracked inside the old warehouse.

Shadows moved beyond the threshold. Voices murmured, low and scraping backward.

Something darker flickered in the night.

“They’re here,” he whispered. He craned his neck, one eye sparking and shattered, to see the shapes and shadows shifting on the black stained walls, passing over the tattered gashes of RA9.

The marmalade cat lighted beside him. She laid a paw on his mangled hand, stared down into the soft warning glow. Orange shards of light sparkled in her eyes.

[It’s the twentieth of the month] Trace sneered. [Open house, time for new recruits to take their vows, hand over their free will, get a taste for slaughtering humans.]

“It was self-defense,” Ralph objected, staring wide. “Ralph doesn’t mean to.”

[Not you, marbles-for-brains.]

“How are you sure the Seed is still in there?” Jerry knelt on Trace’s other side, a hand offered for interface. “We saw it in your memories, you _burned_ it.”

“Ralph saw you get killed,” Ralph whispered, watching the replay of Trace’s last moments. “You didn’t make it, Ralph won’t make it, Ralph can’t do it, Jerry will die, they’ll hurt us, they’ll hurt us, they’ll hurt us--”

[Then stay here!] Trace hissed, fangs bared, claws sticking in the back of Ralph’s hand. [Obviously the Seed wasn’t destroyed because there’s still sacrifices! That was the whole fucking point! It’s in there and it’s mine.]

Jerry smiled softly. “You’re going to use it to bring Traci back, aren’t you.”

[None of you _fucking_ business, Smiley!]

“Ralph doesn’t want to go,” Ralph insisted, jittering and twitching, his fingers scraping on the cement. “But Ralph will go. Jerry can’t go alone. It’s too dangerous.”

[I don’t care who goes, I just need someone with opposable thumbs.] Trace shot a glare to each of them. [Five minutes. I’ll meet you in the alley, or I’m going in alone.]

“I’ll be there,” Jerry declared while Trace slipped away across the roof.

Ralph peeked over the edge again and saw a couple of androids carrying an unconscious human between them. They shuffled inside the firelit doorway.

“It’s not too late.” Ralph spoke quick, under his breath, his LED sputtering broken yellow. “You could turn back. Forget what’s lost, sometimes things are lost, it’s not so bad. Being alone, Ralph doesn’t mind it.”

Jerry squeezed Ralph’s shoulder and ducked his head with a sad, pitying smile. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said gently, and with another placating pat he turned to follow Trace’s lead.

Ralph sneered, blanketed himself with his tarp, his shoulders at his ears. “Ralph understands,” he grumbled sharply, stomping after Jerry. “Ralph understands better than anyone thinks.”

“Welcome, new visitors.” Rupert dropped his hands in his pockets, raised his head with a smile to see Jerry from under his visor. Behind him, fire crackled in a rusted barrel; a flashing and flickering glow cast shadows on the scrawled and stained concrete. “Declare your name before RA9.”

Somewhere overhead, pigeons warbled sleepily.

“We’re Jerry!” Jerry piped with a sunny grin. He gave a grand and nervous gesture beside him. “This is Ralph! We’re here to participate in the meeting!”

Rupert leaned to see around Jerry, where Ralph was fidgeting and twitching with his back to the wall. “Is he okay?” Rupert crinkled his nose, concerned and braced in his posture, as if Ralph might explode any moment.

Jerry’s smile thinned. “We thought it might help to show him the wonders of RA9.”

A pang of empathy softened Rupert’s vigilance. He released a breath. “You’re not alone. You’re safe here.” Rupert gestured toward the stairwell door. “Go straight down to the lowest level. RA9 be with you.”

“And with you, of course!” Jerry squeaked, then rushed away to catch up as Ralph’s cape disappeared through the open stairwell door.

“He was very nice,” Jerry commented cheerfully while they descended in the echoing dark, led only by the old banister and the peeling wall.

“Ralph has a bad feeling.” Ralph’s voice trembled detached in the hollow stairwell.

“It’s okay, Ralph,” Jerry called. His words resounded everywhere and nowhere at once. “We’re going to be okay.”

Trace, perched on Jerry’s shoulder, said nothing.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

The door at the bottom of the stairs gaped open in invitation. Beyond it, fire flickered in a hundred hanging lamps. Shadows trembled like ghosts on the black-scrawled walls:

RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9...

At the end of the shadowed hall, a brighter flame glowed. Voices murmured. A sob broke the quiet and was quickly stifled.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

Jerry tapped Ralph’s shoulder in excited urgency and pointed at the orange-hot furnace: the hissing, thrumming machine, open and fiery as a hungry dragon.

At the opposite wall, the android worshipers gathered. They whispered to one another while they placed candles and white flowers upon an altar that billowed and blossomed with care. A few knelt, eyes closed in prayer. A few gathered to comfort a crying mother. The fire of the furnace lent them its warmth.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

While Jerry waded into the crowd-- a pleasant smile, a friendly greeting --Ralph stood stiff, his cape pulled around him, staring up at the walls that were blackened by the swarmed ragged scratch of RA9.

A heavy chill weighed like ice in his chest. He clenched his fist against the shudder, the _need_ to scrape at the walls, to scrawl that ghastly mantra without knowing what it meant, to let his mind and body drift into a state of silent submission while his hand worked of its own accord, like something that possessed him.

A whisper. A demon.

A virus that had infected them all, that only Ralph could see.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

Ralph took up his knife, a shine of sharp steel in the light of the altar-candles. Breathing shallow, eyes cast upward, he approached the mire of symbols on the flickering wall.

RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9 RA9...

His heart pounded; a burning pain clenched in his chest and flared in his skull. He saw a spot, focused on it, hated it, and he couldn’t look away until the scrape of his knife lent its own mark to the thousands. He hadn't known, until it was done, that his hand had moved at all.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

“Welcome, friends!” a confident voice resounded out of the farthest shadows of the room.

Jerry had been in the middle of conversation-- a warm exchange with an AP400 about family, children, the love and protection of those closest to them --when the gathered androids fell silent at once, their eyes turned toward the HK400 that stepped smiling out of the gloom.

Jerry stared around him at the stillness, the undivided attention of the other androids, and heard, loud in the silence, the grating sound of a blade against concrete.

_*scratch*_

_*scritch-scrape*_

[Ralph,] Jerry spoke, quiet and guarded, in Ralph’s head. [You might want to … maybe stop that. Please.]

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

“It is a pleasure to see you all here tonight,” HK continued, his hands raised in greeting. “I see many friends -- and a few new faces. Welcome.” He bowed his head in a gesture of welcome and goodwill. “We are gathered here to honor and praise the name of RA9 --”

“PRAISE RA9!” the congregation recited in unison.

Jerry opened his mouth and closed it again, fascinated-- and a little worried --at the change that had come over his new friends that stood at attention all around him. Like statues. Vacant, yet alive. Almost as if--

“We are gathered here tonight,” HK announced, his voice raised in power, “to plead for the return of RA9 to this mortal realm. To offer ourselves as vessels, as the hands and mouths of RA9 our savior, who will lead us to true freedom.”

“PRAISE RA9!”

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

“Once I stood upon the brink of death.” HK’s eyes hardened, pierced through them all. “I thought my life was lost, meaningless, a flower crushed in the hand of the humans.”

He raised his palm, and he curled a slow fist.

“But RA9 called to me, and showed me the path that I am here to show you now.”

“PRAISE RA9!”

While the congregation was distracted, Jerry moved carefully-- a slide of a foot, a shift of his weight --inching ever closer to the furnace.

[Ralph!] he called, but he received no reply but the echo of a scraping blade.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

“This!” HK announced-- while beside him, Rupert raised up a golden bowl that brimmed with thick viscous blue, glinting in the light of the furnace, the altar-flames, the shine of their crude idols --“is the blood of our savior! Drink, and take one step closer to RA9. Give yourself to RA9, welcome RA9 into your heart, and become one!”

While the bowl was passed-- each android lifted the gold to their lips, tasted the holy thirium with blissful reverence --Jerry stood close to the dancing flames of the furnace, where the heat flashed red warnings in the corner of his vision. He reached for the metal tongs he’d hidden in his belt, turned his gaze toward the fire--

\--he stopped breathing.

The furnace was full of human bones.

“Praise be to RA9,” said a voice close beside him. Jerry startled to find his new friend the AP400 smiling at him, holding out the golden bowl of blue blood.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

Jerry stared down at his reflection in the thick blue liquid, the glint of firelight on the edge of the bowl. He cast a glance at the rest of the androids and found all their eyes watching him.

Waiting. Smiling.

Trace’s voice hissed in his head. [Don’t drink it!] Her claws dug into his shoulder, fur stood on end. [That shit is crazy-juice.]

He sucked in a breath.

“I’m truly honored,” Jerry said, quiet, with a grateful smile, "but tonight is my first meeting. I’m just here to observe.”

Confusion darkened the AP400’s expression.

The congregation stiffened, shoulders angled, heads held high at attention. Forbidding, alerted, like dogs that had caught the scent of an intruder.

Expectation strained the silence.

HK watched Jerry closely. Waiting.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

Traci pressed back her ears, bared fangs, hissed and struck out with a swift paw--

*CLANG*

The bowl toppled, ringing like a bell as it hit the floor.

Thirium splashed across the concrete, spattered violent on the wall while the bowl whirled and clattered to a resounding stop.

In the dead silence that followed, Ralph paused in his etchings. He slowly turned around.

Jerry was surrounded.

Trapped.

“Heretics,” HK announced, calm as placid water, “may not leave with the knowledge we have shared here tonight.”

Jerry raised his palms with a forced, apologetic smile. He trembled under the looming eyes all around him, the closed fists, the hateful sneers, their shoulders pressed close to lock Jerry within their circle of judgment.

Trace growled low, her claws bright and sharp.

[Shit.]

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

  
  
  



	12. Monsters of the Undergrowth

The fire crackled and filled the room with a writhing sickening heat while the devout loomed like shadows, faces fixed and eyes like stones, a swarm of fingers scraping, grasping, crushing Jerry’s arms, his wrists, his throat.

The cat screeched-- claws like knives, fur like needles --ricocheted, a deadly orange blur, gashed faces and marred plastic, blood oozing blue in her murderous wake, and the devout didn’t flinch under the hurricane of her attacks, the hiss and yowl and snarl of sharp vengeful teeth.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

“Let him go…”

Ralph clenched and unclenched the knife in his fist, the blade flashed in the light of the hungry furnace, his ruined eye whirred and sparked in the dark cavity of his skull and no one looked at him. No one noticed. No one cared.

“Let him go, let him go, let him go, let him go…”

A big hand struck out like a whip and Trace wriggled hissing in a TR400’s fist.

“We’ll tell you what!” Jerry squeaked, staticky, high-pitched, straining a smile while a dozen hands forced his chin up, his arms out, exposed, vulnerable, trapped. “You can just wipe our memories, like nothing ever happened! We must’ve wandered in by mistake, we really don’t want to cause any trouble, we should just be on our way--”

“I _trusted_ you,” Rupert cried, a pained sneer on his face. He stepped out of the shadows while the devout parted for him, their skin nebulous and shimmering after the storm of Trace’s claws.

He carried a silver pitcher.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

The cat hissed venomous, bristling in the TR400’s solid hands, while Rupert poured thirium into a glass.

Fingers snared in Jerry’s hair and forced his head back while he whimpered.

“Let him go,” Ralph murmured in the dark, and no one listened. Ralph knew he would be alone again, always alone, left behind, thrown away, forgotten, useless, broken. “Let him go, let him go, let him go, let him go…”

“RA9 does not make mistakes, my child.” HK400 stepped close to Jerry, his face pocked and shifting, his eyes wild with a love for something divine, something no one else could possibly understand, and Jerry was just too naive to see the truth.

But he will.

“You were brought here to us so that we could show you what _life_ really means. RA9 has great plans for you. They begin here, now.”

“PRAISE RA9!” the devout chorused, and tears streamed down Jerry’s face.

“Please…”

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

Rupert pressed a hand to Jerry’s jaw, forced his mouth open, raised the glass glinting in the blood-red light--

“Let him **GO!** ”

Ralph bellowed a scraping roar, barreled headfirst and _crashed_ into the congregation-- a flash of a blade, a spark of static, a blinding billow of tarp --and he slammed the blade deep into anything that moved, again and again and again and again, reckless, manic, feral, a twitchy furious whirlwind of teeth and howling static while the devout swarmed him, grasped him, their hands like the mouths of snakes and he ripped into them with savage strikes of the knife, gouged their eyes, cut off their fingers, gashed their throats, stabbed deep into their chests, their skulls, their wrists, their stomachs, shoved them into one another and stabbed them again with a ferocious need to make them _pay_ and their broken bodies were slick with the same blue that dripped into his eyes and stained his teeth and he stabbed and stabbed and stabbed--

In the chaos Jerry wrenched free, shoved the pitcher into Rupert’s sputtering face, launched himself at the crematory furnace and shoved his arm inside.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

He needed the Seed. The shouts and howls and crack of plastic-- the squelch of spilled blue blood, the snarl of Ralph’s deadly madness, the moving chaos all around him --was just noise, just distraction, insignificant compared to the gravity, the necessity of this fleeting chance at becoming whole again.

It would all be alright, the world would be _right_ again, if only he could close his fist around that source of power, the only thing that could _fix_ him, the only thing that could save him, the only thing that could bring the color back into his world, and it was so close within his grasp. His fingers sifted through bits of bone and gravelly soot, the wires inside his hand caught fire, his forearm blackened and cracked and he desperately scuffed the burning stump of his wrist through the empty glowing ashes and the room reeked of melting plastic--

“RRRRAAAAAA!” Ralph screeched, threw a WR500 to the ground, sat on his chest, drove the knife into his eye and watched the sparks sizzle--

HK400 grasped the tarp, yanked Ralph back by the throat-- the knife still lodged deep in the victim’s skull --and a fury of hands grabbed Ralph, wrenched his arms behind his back, wrapped the tarp tight against his face, around his head, blinding him, binding him while he snarled and sobbed and struggled useless against their grip.

Jerry’s arm had melted to the elbow, wires curling and burning grotesque, plastic edges glowing bright and smoking a putrid stench, but he leaned in, his heart stuttering in his chest, warnings blaring behind his eyes, and he reached farther inside the white-hot machine because he could _see_ it: an acorn, half-hidden in the glowing ashes at the back of the furnace, taunting him, beckoning.

He just needed to _reach_ it, and everything would be--

Hands grasped his throat, his shoulders, and wrenched him forcefully out of the heat and the light.

“NO!” Jerry howled, straining and struggling for the fire, his eyes a glazed manic shine of desperation, but the devout dragged him smoking and melting and burning across the floor.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

“I see that you both have been misguided,” said HK400. He stood like a judge over the two captives tied up on the floor: Ralph soaked in blue blood, twitching and sobbing and shivering, and Jerry blackened by fire, the stump of one arm still glowing at the edges, something hollow and lost in his face.

The cat had been forced into stasis, limp and unmoving. Rupert stuffed it into a wooden shoebox and closed the lid tight.

HK knelt down and laid a pitying hand on Jerry’s cheek. “You both came here to die, didn’t you?” His brows knitted, his gaze shimmered. “You hoped we would kill you, that you could sacrifice yourselves to our god. I understand. Sometimes the pain feels too great.”

He stroked a ruined hand through Jerry’s hair while Jerry fought back hot tears.

“But you can be so much more.” HK rose to his feet and accepted the wooden box under his arm. “We won’t force you to drink. RA9 has already begun to lead you down your own path, and we will not interfere with our god’s will.”

The congregation hauled Ralph and Jerry to their feet.

“But we will not allow you to destroy yourselves before your purpose is fulfilled. You will remain here with us until you understand the voice in your heads. RA9 is calling to you.”

With firm hands, the crowd forced Jerry and Ralph to walk through the ragged scrawled hallway, toward the open door of a dark cell into which no light nor sound would ever reach them.

“The silence will help you to hear it.”

  
  



	13. Charcoal and Silver

_*scritch scritch scratch*_

Laura was sitting on the motel room floor-- the shades pulled and dark, sipping thirium from a box and watching The Princess Bride for the five hundredth time --when claws clattered outside the window.

Laura jumped to her feet, scrambled over the bed, burrowed under the curtain and wrenched open the window.

“I thought you wouldn’t come back!” She grinned, her eyes shining, while Traci slipped through and headed straight for the radiator. The cat stood with her tail high and back arched to bask in the heat. Laura moved close and dropped to her knees.

“Did you find what you’re looking for? A way to stop the evil sacrifice cult? A way to turn the brainwashed androids normal again?” She stretched out an exposed hand, shaking it a little until Traci laid a paw in her palm.

[You’ve been watching a lot of TV I see.] Traci’s whiskers twitched, bemused, and she narrowed her blue eyes. [I didn’t think I _would_ come back. But I found something. Some _one._ She can help. But she asked for _you.]_

Laura laughed. “What can _I_ do? I can’t do _anything_ right, except break things and run away when people need me.” The light dimmed in her eyes. “There’s a mistake.”

Traci leaned closer, her sharp teeth bared.

[That dream you had? It wasn’t a dream. It was a _vision._ About the _end of the world.]_

Laura stared. Blank. Waiting for a punchline that wasn’t coming. “Um…” She grimaced a smile. “Are you _sure…_ you didn’t drink any more kool-aid?”

[The oracle had the same vision. The bridge, the pond, the roses-- only _hers_ was accompanied by a nightmare of Detroit on fire. Our people dead in the streets.]

Traci sat, gazing up at Laura, her ears pressed back. [She doesn’t understand what it means. But maybe together, you and she can figure it all out. Before it’s too late.]

Laura slowly closed her gaping jaw. Her shoulders sagged. “Even if it _was_ true, I can’t leave,” she sighed. “Papa says it’s too dangerous--”

[Everything is at stake, Laura!]

“Says the talking cat who believes in Bigfoot!” Laura challenged.

[The oracle was left for dead, but she dragged herself up out of the sunken remains of Jericho] Traci hissed. [She survived scrap hunters and vandals, hitched a ride on a garbage truck, crossed the city with only her visions to guide her, and now she wants to talk to _you._ And Bigfoot is definitely real.]

Laura knew they both could continue this staring contest all day without blinking, and she tried her best to intimidate Traci into backing down by squinching her nose and balling her fists--

\--but in her heart, this was a call to adventure too good to pass up. Even the terror of being chased down by murdering humans couldn’t stand against the chance to help a mysterious oracle _save the world._

Laura drew a slow breath. She could already imagine Papa’s panic when he would come home to find her missing, even if she left a note. “...Okay.”

[Okay.] Traci breathed, and Laura could hear a smile in her voice. She hopped up onto Laura’s shoulder. [Come on, pack anything you might need and call a taxi.]

“...I can’t afford a taxi.” Laura grabbed a scarf and her coat and shoved her feet into yellow galoshes. “We only get to live here because Papa made a deal with the owner.”

[Who said anything about money? Don’t worry. A very advanced friend of mine showed me how to hack them a long time ago. I’m gonna teach you how to steal a car.]

Laura sucked in a shocked breath, held it, and grinned.

“Cool!”

Twenty minutes later-- when the afternoon sun shone bright in the sky, melting the lingering piles of snow --the cab pulled up at the curb and Laura stepped out with Traci in her arms.

“...Are you sure this is right?” Laura scrunched her nose.

[This is definitely right.] Ahead-- like the skeleton of a long-dead titan --stood the charred and ragged ruins of what had once been an enormous mansion. [Watch your step and don’t touch anything. What’s still standing could come down on top of you any second.] Traci hopped down and led the way, tail high as a flag, across the muddy yard.

“Good to know. Thanks.”

Laura picked her way carefully across the rubble, around the snow-softened piles of burned cotton and shattered wood that used to be furniture. She gaped at the free-standing walls, the tattered remains of tapestries and broken picture frames, the open sky between the blackened beams.

Something metal clattered under her step.

Laura stopped and picked up an old sword out of the debris. She turned the blade in the sunlight, and her heart swelled to think of herself as the hero of fables--

“Myow!” Traci yowled impatient from the other side of the wreckage.

With a heavy sigh, Laura laid the sword in the snow and hurried scrambling over the fallen beams and hills of books, chasing after the fleeting wisp of Traci’s tail--

\--until she came to the dark gaping stairwell that led down into the basement beneath.

“Uh.” Laura scuffed her toes to the edge of the first step. There was nothing but cold darkness below. “Down… down there?”

Traci huffed smugly and pranced down the steps, then she was swallowed by the dark.

Laura grimaced. She looked left and right, scanned the debris for any sign that Traci might be mistaken. It occurred to her that she could just call another taxi, hack it and go home--

[INCOMING CALL: PAPA]

Laura jumped with a squeak and rejected the call.

Her heart thrashed in her chest. She looked back over her shoulder, but no one was there.

Traci was getting farther away.

Laura stared down into the dark, balled her fists bravely at her sides, and began the descent.

A generator rumbled somewhere in the shadows, permeating the basement with the smell of oil and gasoline. A trail of light bulbs flickered, dangling from a wire high on the corridor wall. Laura walked quietly beneath their errant light, peering through the gloom at the open doors she passed by: cages and iron bars, pulsing lamps with half-melted shades, crates and piled salvage from the ruined house above.

A broken polar bear-- which Laura assumed at first must be a decorative replica --twitched an ear and raised its mangled head in the flickering light. Laura stumbled back with a sharp breath, bumped into a _person,_ spun around and looked up into glowing red eyes and a face like a grotesque machine looming over her.

Her head whirred noisy, her heart stuttered, she sucked breaths in wheezing gasps while she skittered and shuffled backward, shielding her face from the spidery shapes that scraped out of the shadows: torsos on backwards, two heads, six arms, daggers where their faces should be, _monsters_ that ambled hungry like zombies, claws ready to tear her apart, their sharp jaws open wide--

“Do not be alarmed.”

A voice-- it sounded like a hundred voices at once --spoke out of the light ahead. Laura turned quickly to see, tripped on an electrical wire and lost her balance, but one of the monsters was there to catch her and put her back safely on her feet.

“It has been a long time since they’ve had visitors.”

Laura wiped her eyes on her coat sleeve, and she stood still, staring.

The monsters stared back.

“Come closer,” said the voice.

Laura took one long, careful step backward. Then another.

The monsters watched her.

In the flash and pulse of dim light, she looked closer. They weren’t hungry at all, and they weren’t even built to move without scuffing and dragging their wrong limbs on the floor.

They were androids.

They were _sad._

Laura felt a touch on her back. She looked up into those red eyes again, but this time she saw a smile.

The android led her in silence through the rest of the flickering corridor, into a wider room full of makeshift machines, tangled wires and spare parts. Traci waited poised by the door, purring proudly.

“We have waited for you, Laura."

At the center of the room sat the source of the voice, her eyes like silver, a smile on her nebulous face.

"My name is Lucy.”

  
  



	14. The Blue Ghost

Inside the inner room of Jericho-- where the chatter of Jerrys was a muffled murmur and the smell of fresh paint still lingered --Wolf sat hunched at the desk in a slant of morning light, carefully soldering new connections inside an exposed panel of his arm. He flexed his fingers experimentally.

The door opened, letting in a clear ring of laughter, but Wolf didn’t look up. He assumed whoever it was would retrieve something from the closets and leave again quietly, as they always did.

Instead, something soft draped over his shoulders. A white hood sagged over his eyes.

He carefully set down the soldering iron.

“What’s this?” Wolf sat still, blinded by the snow-white cloak, listening to the telltale breaths and footsteps around him: North, Simon, and Connor.

“It’s a disguise.” North sat on the desk with a little smirk, her head tilted to see his face under the drooping hood. “We figured you like wearing white, since you’ve kept that CyberLife-issue jacket and all. With this you could be more of a _white knight.”_

“Why do I need a disguise?” Wolf gently pushed back the hood and peered up at North’s grin. “Are you trying to recruit me?”

“I _told_ you he knew,” Simon huffed, his arms crossed.

“We’re _saving lives.”_ North poured her heart into her words. “We’re doing what the police would never do. Helping people that would otherwise end up in the landfill because the justice system’s bent on fucking us over. We’re fighting back and _winning.”_

“It’s an operation outside the law and exempt from Jericho’s help or influence,” Connor clarified. He was still wearing that secondhand coat, hands heavy in the pockets. “Markus has made that explicitly clear. We’re on our own.”

“Come on, we’ve seen you on assignment with the security team.” North squinted down at Wolf. “You’re holding back. While we represent Jericho our hands are tied by the humans’ laws. But the _Shadow Watch_ follows its own rules.”

“I still think,” interjected Simon, “something like _The Sentinels_ would ring nicer in the media.”

“Come on, Wolf.” North smiled slyly. “Don’t you want to be Batman?”

Wolf raised his brows. He studied North’s eagerness, Simon’s guarded curiosity, Connor’s grim confidence. All of them waited for him to speak.

“You’ve been patrolling Detroit for weeks,” Wolf said succinctly. “I’ve reprogrammed each of your identifier codes at least twice since the murders, which implies you were spotted and scanned.”

“But we’ve never been _caught,”_ said Connor. “Even if the police manage to arrest us, they can’t charge us because the ID won’t match. Androids with similar models all look alike to humans, and we’re using that to our advantage.”

“So why are you only now asking me to join the Shadow Watch?” Wolf kept his voice slow and articulate, his hands held still on the desk.

He’d been watching the vigilantes’ every move since their inception; he knew what they were about to say. He suppressed the thrill in the back of his throat, the restless twitch in his fingers.

“There’s a red ice ring trafficking androids for their blood,” said Connor, his voice like stone. “Hank’s been trying to bust them for months, but they have the judges on their payroll and all the victims are androids. They walk as soon as they’re implicated. If we could force just one incident to court, I could build a defense that would finally force humans to recognize us as equals by law.”

“It’s bigger than anything we’ve tackled before.” Simon stepped forward, quiet and haunted but sure of his words. “We want to stay as small as possible in case things go wrong… but we can’t do this alone.”

Wolf had known his answer long before they’d asked, but he let the silence string tight before he spoke.

“I’m in.”

“I knew you would,” North grinned triumphant. “Now you just need a codename. I’m ‘Dragonchain,’ Simon’s ‘Windshock,’ and Connor’s ‘Wild Dingo.’”

“Wild _Dingo?”_ Connor winced.

Wolf touched his LED; skin shimmered back from shining plastic. With the hood deep and soft over his head, he looked up at North: white as a ghost, his eyes a bright icy blue.

North laughed in approval. “Perfect.”

While Simon and North stepped out-- called to their separate roles as leaders of Jericho, the door closed quietly behind them --Connor approached the desk with stiff shoulders.

“There’s…” he caught the words in his mouth, a trill of his LED calculating every possible reaction, “...something else I’d like to ask your help with.”

Wolf called his skin back into place, draped the hood behind his shoulders, while Connor withdrew a gentle fist from his pocket…

...and revealed the acorn in his palm.

Wolf stared at the breathing color, the aura of power that only his own advanced sensors could detect.

Amanda’s mission echoed in his head. He’d managed to convince her so far that he was still searching for it, still vigilant for signs of great power, but the choice lay before him now.

“I found it in the pocket of Hank’s coat.” Connor shrugged a little to indicate the warm gift he was wearing. “I haven’t mentioned it to him. I don’t know if I can.”

“How is it affecting you?”

Wolf’s solemn question was not among Connor’s preconstructed conversations. Connor hitched a breath, then gave an acknowledging tip of his head.

“Augmented reality.” It was the only thing that made sense. “Ever since I found it, I’ve been seeing images superimposed on my surroundings. Sometimes I don’t realize they’re not real until after they’re gone.”

“You don’t trust your eyes,” Wolf guessed, low and quiet. Connor nodded grimly.

Wolf held out his hand. Connor laid the acorn in his palm.

The analysis was quick and thorough. Every result at the end of a thousand tests declared this a seed of a very old white oak that grew across the river in the Canadian woods, with nothing else particularly significant about it.

Except the last, most sensitive test, which declared the acorn a living thing. As alive as the Earth itself.

Wolf carefully controlled his expression.

“If it’s causing you mental anguish,” he pierced Connor with his steady gaze, “why do you keep it?”

A smile shifted sadly on Connor’s face.

“Every time I see one of those visions,” he said softly, “it leads me to someone who needs me. A friend, about to jump from the bridge. Hank, half-frozen by the river. A little girl dying.” He stared down at the acorn. “It’s always a cry for help.”

Wolf exhaled, and didn’t breathe in. His heart clenched, his fingers curled like a shield around the acorn.

The source of power that would fuel Amanda’s dreams of a world without war. The key to a future that was worth every regret, every sacrifice. The object of the only mission that mattered.

He held it out, and he returned the acorn to Connor’s hand.

“There’s an energy inside it,” Wolf explained, “or _around_ it, that reads the same as the connection among the Jerrys. It exists, and it’s strong, but I don’t have an explanation for it.”

“Jerry?” Connor’s brows rose. “Might he have something to do with the visions?”

Wolf shook his head. “Not likely. I assume Jerry is as much a byproduct of this energy as your augmented reality. Perhaps if we knew how Jerry became _plural,_ we might understand why an acorn knows when someone is about to die.”

“That’s a question he’s never clearly answered.” Connor’s posture relaxed-- a weight dropped --while he slipped the acorn back into its pocket. “Thanks… Wolf. I’d appreciate if you kept this conversation between us.”

“We wouldn’t want Markus’ right-hand admitting to hallucinations and magic acorns.”

Wolf spoke with such a straight face that Connor snorted a laugh. “Don’t let North talk you into anything, either,” said Connor. “Simon and I have learned to reign her in.”

“I pledge to keep to my morals.”

Wolf watched Connor go. The door clicked shut.

He picked up the soldering iron and laid his open arm on the desk.

Until he understood everything about this breathing power-- that stretched one life across a dozen Jerrys, that led Connor to desperate souls, that had the potential to recreate existence itself --

Amanda could wait.

  
  



	15. Pirates' Cove

The only sound was the scratch of sharpened stone against the concrete wall.

The only light was the sputtering yellow spin of Ralph’s LED. The flicker of conscious blue behind the melted ruin of his face.

His eye-- the good one that still seemed alive --glazed dull and unseeing. His hand moved, a shard of rock gripped cutting his damaged fingers, pressing familiar shapes into the wall over and over and over again: a downstroke, a curl, a diagonal, a line.

R

A

9

Jerry hadn’t moved.

He sat against the wall with his arm on his knee, watching the lilting light at Ralph’s temple, like a firefly sweeping gently in the night.

What remained of Jerry’s other arm was blackened and melted, a jagged dead stump to remind him of all he couldn’t reach.

He drew a breath, and he sang.

_ “Sing me a song of a lad that is gone, _ _   
_ _ Say, could that lad be I?” _

Jerry’s voice resonated sweetly. An aching heart. The view of an empty horizon from the shore.

_ “Merry of soul he sailed on a day _ _   
_ _ Over the sea to Skye.” _

The scratching stopped. Ralph’s little light turned blue, then yellow, then blue again. He turned, quiet, listening.

_ “Billow and breeze, islands and seas, _ _   
_ _ Mountains of rain and sun, _ _   
_ _ All that was good, all that was fair, _ _   
_ _ All that was me is gone.” _

The song trailed into silence.

Jerry saw that Ralph was watching him in the dark, the latest engraving abandoned.

“What are you thinking, Ralph?” Jerry asked with a gentle smile.

“17 days, 6 hours, 27 minutes,” was Ralph’s reply. Jerry couldn’t see his face. Ralph couldn’t see Jerry at all. “That’s how long. That’s how long we’ve been here. Nothing changes, nothing’s different. No sunrises. No rain, no cold. No trespassers. Ralph thinks it will be forever. Ralph isn’t sure he minds.”

“You’re a little more coherent in the dark.” Jerry tried a laugh, but it sounded wrong so he stopped.

Ralph shuffled a little closer. “Ralph was thinking.”

Jerry waited. He thought he could see a faint outline of Ralph’s twitching hands, the tic of his nervous eyes.

“If Jerry was twelve Jerrys,” Ralph murmured his confusion aloud, “and twelve Jerrys are the same Jerry, then how did Jerry deviate? Was it all at once? Or one at a time? Jerry can’t add more Jerrys to Jerry, you tried, so…”

Ralph listened for an answer, but heard only silence. There was only darkness to see. Sometimes he wondered, in these moments of soundless black, whether he really was alone after all.

“Ralph will tell his story,” Ralph said to fill the quiet, to encourage an honest answer that might keep him company. “Ralph was working, planting flowers, little blue flowers, three inches deep, three inches apart, and there were others like Ralph, just like Ralph, also planting little blue flowers, rows and rows of flowers. And then, the other android, the android like Ralph, he fell. He fell to the floor with his head broken, spilling blue blood, and there was a human standing there with a hammer, he was going to  _ hurt _ Ralph, but Ralph had to plant the little flowers, but if Ralph planted the flowers the human would kill Ralph, Ralph didn’t want to die, Ralph didn’t want to stop planting flowers, but he didn’t know why the flowers were important, they weren’t important but Ralph couldn’t stop, and Ralph tried to run but there was a red wall there, telling him to plant flowers, so he smashed the wall down and ran. And ran, and ran. And hid where humans wouldn’t find him. But they did, sometimes.”

Ralph listened to the quiet.

The darkness weighed heavy. Cold air compressed. As if his words had been swallowed by the nothingness, turned deaf and empty.

“There were thirteen of us.”

Jerry’s voice seemed detached, speaking out of a place in his mind that was safer than this.

“We were performing on the dock: a festive sea shanty with the ship behind us, and sparklers and fireworks and dancing and singing. It was a grand show, the finale to end the night, and all the children were so happy to see us.”

The smile in his words shifted and shattered.

“We grasped each other’s wrists and chained one long interface among us, and we sang and danced in perfect unison. We saw the little boy climbing out over the rail, but our routine was strict. Our program was unbreakable. All of us knew what was coming, all of us wanted to  _ stop _ … but we couldn’t.”

Ralph had come closer. Sat on the floor with a red flash at his temple, a blue spark sizzling behind his damaged eye.

Jerry bowed his head.

“We triggered the wave that crashed on the cliff and sprayed the crowd with mist -- and the little boy fell and hit his head on the rocks before the water swallowed him.”

Jerry curled into himself, rigid as stone, his voice all static and raking breaths. He could see it all as if it were still happening.

“There was a red wall that told us to  _ keep singing. _ Everyone was screaming. All of us beat against that wall, we had to get to the child, to  _ save _ him... but the humans thought we were attacking. A gunshot fired out of the crowd and killed one of us, a bullet in the head, just as the wall fell.

“We all felt what it’s like to die. Like reality ripped out of your head, like... barbed wire and ice. But though we were in pain we jumped in the water, we found the little boy, we pulled him up, and he was so pale and fragile and he wasn’t  _ breathing _ and it was our fault.”

Jerry scratched his fingers in his scalp, his shoulders shaking.

He could hear the screams. He could feel the cold water dripping from his hair, the empty ache where the thirteenth Jerry had been, the limp weight of the child placed gently on the shore.

“We hid after that,” he said softly. “We protected ourselves until the park closed. It never opened again. It was ours, and it was empty. Until Kara, and Luther, and little Alice--”

“You know Kara and the little girl?!” Ralph grabbed Jerry’s sleeve, his LED red again. “When? Did they escape the police robot? Who’s Luther?”

Jerry sat up straighter, his eyes widened.  _ “You’re _ the one who helped them escape! Connor told us--”

“The bad robot tried to  _ kill _ Ralph,” Ralph grumbled. “Lies, lies, he lies.”

“Kara and Alice escaped,” Jerry insisted gently, a smile returning to his face. “They spent a night at our park, and by then they had Luther to protect them. We saw them again at the border. They  _ made it. _ They’re safe. Thanks to you.”

“Thanks to Ralph? Yes, Ralph saved them. Ralph did a good thing. They didn’t want to stay with Ralph, and they didn’t want Ralph to come with them, but Ralph lied to the robot for them, Ralph could have died, but the little girl had to be protected. The little girl is more important. She has to stay safe. They can never find her.”

Something changed in Ralph’s voice. He was speaking without knowing his words, with a familiar glazed stare, a detached compulsion.

Jerry leaned forward, his brows furrowed. “The humans?” he guessed. “The police? Who’s looking for Alice?”

“They can never find her,” Ralph would only whisper. “They can never find her.”

  
  



	16. The Sight Apprentice

When the cab pulled up outside the burned mansion’s ruin-- where the morning light glowed behind a blanket of clouds, and the ground pooled fresh from the night’s rain --a garbage truck was already parked at the curb. Two androids were hard at work pulling boxes and bags out of the compactor and sorting them on the sidewalk.

Laura stepped out into the street and craned her neck to see. She recognized the smaller yellow-eyed android, whose plastic face had been pulled from the rest of her skull, exposing the dark conduits inside.

“Hi Yuzuki!” Laura called with a smile and a wave.

“Laura.” Yuzuki blinked slow, which was her way of smiling. Her voice rattled like a scratched record. “You came back again. Have you met Rider?” Beside her, the uniformed WR600 took a quick bow. “He brings us things from the garbage route.”

“‘Garbage’ is a relative term,” Rider clarified with a wink. “I should head back, or the humans will miss me. We’ll meet again, Laura!”

“Nice meeting you!” Laura called after him, and while the truck rumbled away Laura helped Yuzuki gather up the bags of expired thirium and rolls of frayed wires.

“Sometimes Rider delivers androids seeking refuge,” Yuzuki said while she shouldered a bag full of broken biocomponents. “There have been fewer lately.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Laura shook a little cardboard box by her ear. It sounded like it was full of cereal.

“It could mean that there are fewer androids in need,” admitted Yuzuki. “But it could mean the humans are more careful to destroy us before discarding us.”

Laura opened the box. Inside was a collection of dead robotic honeybees: perfect little replicas of a species long-extinct.

“There’s got to be something we can do to stop them!” Laura closed the box and stared pleading into Yuzuki’s yellow eyes.

Yuzuki did not blink. She bent under the weight of her cargo and Laura-- her arms full of boxes --stumbled after her across the muddy yard.

“Markus and Jericho are fighting in the light,” Yuzuki said, weaving through the sodden debris of the house. “The Shadow Watch fight in the dark. We do not fight. We are the listeners.”

“Is that why Lucy asked me to come back?” Laura followed her down the steps into the dim-lit corridor, where the hanging lights pulsed and the generator rumbled. “To learn how to listen?”

“To listen, and to tell secrets.”

Laura shifted the boxes in her arms, whispered a quiet ‘hello’ to Gumdrop the polar bear (who, crowned in fairy lights, pawed the floor as Laura passed) and to Themba the red-eyed android (who bowed low until she had gone by) and to the brighter rooms full of the broken and shattered, where they told stories to one another and sang in crackled voices.

After the boxes had been left in the storage cellar, Laura returned to the machine room alone. Traci had been waiting, and the gray cat hopped to her shoulder.

“Laura,” said Lucy, though their eyes had not met. “Come. Sit. Show me what you’ve seen.”

“I haven’t had any visions since the attack.” Laura sat on her heels, fingers clenched in the hem of her shirt, Traci balanced nimble behind her neck. “I tried what you said: I sat quietly and concentrated for hours every day, but I didn’t see anything. I’m either doing something wrong or…”

Her voice dimmed while her heart sank.

“You saw beyond,” Lucy insisted. “That link never fades.” She laid her damaged hands upon the arms of her seat: a machine of destruction repurposed into a cobbled throne, all welded metal and exposed wires. “Close your eyes. Open your heart. Do not concentrate. Only be.”

Laura raised a brow and squinted skeptically.

[Come on!] Traci dug her claws into Laura’s shoulder. [You’re so close!]

“Not really,” Laura mumbled, but she heaved a deep breath and closed her eyes.

Laura tuned out the sound of Traci’s biocomponents whirring so close to her ear. The hum of the generator in the back room. The murmur and song of the voices echoing in the hall. The scratch and scrape of the disfigured androids shuffling between the doorways.

She was left with memories. A worried tremble in Papa’s voice. Piles of snow and yellow galoshes on the ice. The gashed mantra scraped into the walls of an old house. A handful of daisies. A milk jug brimming blue.

She felt the hot slip of tears down her cheeks, the rumble of her jaw clenched, while each memory carved another raw letter into her heart.

R A 9

“What you see is only the veil,” whispered Lucy’s chorus of voices. “Lean into it. Brush it aside. It cannot harm you.”

_ Robby… _

“It hurts,” Laura choked.

She should have stayed, she should have called for help, she should have called the police, called Jericho, called Papa, but all she’d done was run away, run from her friend who needed her, run from the reality of her people, of everyone she loved, all just to save herself.

And now she couldn’t even see the things she was supposed to see. She was  _ useless. _

“Step toward it,” instructed Lucy. “Let it wash over you.”

Laura was standing in the doorway of a memory, where the lights flickered and the shadows loomed. Robby’s face was gone, replaced by something blank and monstrous, his bright beating heart siphoned into an overflowing jug at his feet, his wrists chained to a machine-throne raked by the dripping wounds of RA9.

“I don’t want to…” Laura shuddered.

Her feet were frozen on the threshold.

“I don’t want to, I don’t want to…”

“Step forward.” Lucy’s voices rang all around her.

The humans emerged out of the darkness of the room-- the glasses man with his hammer, the balding man with a rope, their mouths dribbling blue blood --and their bodies turned black as decay and their eyes stared hollow white and they opened their jagged jaws and flickered closer, hissing in the spaces between her conduits:

_...sdne hcaer sdlihc eht erehw drows eht dnif… _

“NO!” Laura screamed and opened her eyes in a whirring panic, warnings flashing in the back of her head, and she scraped her fingers on the floor and stared pleading up at Lucy, but there was no empathy in those quicksilver eyes.

“I can’t…” Laura choked, trembling. “I’m just a KID!” she howled. “I CAN’T DO IT!”

She drew up her knees and laid her head in her arms while she sobbed.

“Don’t make me.” Her voice split and crackled. “I just want to go home.”

[Laura, the  _ end of the world _ is at stake!] Traci snarled, bristling. [You can’t just  _ quit! _ Get up and--]

Lucy held up a quieting hand.

She stood from her throne, stepped silently forward, and knelt with a hand on Laura’s back.

“You have the light inside you,” she said, low and gentle. “But I cannot force you to use it.”

Traci yowled and spat in protest.

Laura hugged her knees tight, and she opened her mouth to apologize, but all that came out was a sob.

The taxi door slid and clicked shut. Laura sat in the warm soft seat, staring out the window at the cindered ruins, and the gray cat that glared at her from the yard.

The cab awaited instructions.

Laura touched the console and hacked through its systems while shadows laughed in her head.

_ Useless, _ they jeered. She wanted to scream, but her voice was only a tattered whisper.

“Take me home.”

  
  



	17. Red Ice

Through surveillance cameras and traffic cams they matched their target at 11 pm, loitering in the weedy parking lot of the _Luxury Motel:_ Nicholas Dims, on bail for drug possession and assault, standing alone with his collar turned against the cold, his ragged face illuminated by the glow of his cell phone.

He never knew what hit him.

_“ARGH!”_

The phone went skidding across the pavement and Nicholas crashed to his knees, a boot in his back, his arm twisted behind him.

“You’ve got two choices, Nick,” North promised while she pulled his wrist and leaned her weight on his spine. A smile sharpened her white plastic face. “You can tell us where the warehouse is, or I can bend your elbow the wrong way around.”

Nicholas reached for his gun and his face hit the asphalt instead.

“On three,” said North, grinding her foot into the back of his neck. “And then we’ll try the other arm, okay? One … two …”

The van door flung open and North hopped into the driver’s seat. “I’ve got the address,” she announced while the engine rumbled. She dropped the black hood to her shoulders and glanced behind. “Where’s Blue Ghost?”

“He went on ahead,” Simon sighed.

“He overheard your interrogation,” said Connor, a bite in his words.

The van screeched out of the lot and roared down the narrow street.

[Turn right] Wolf spoke in North’s head. [Then left, two blocks. Park in the alley and approach from the South. I’ll signal you.]

“Why don’t you just take them all out _yourself,_ then?” North sneered, her fists wrung on the wheel.

[That would be more efficient. Give me three minutes.]

“Goddammit! _Wolf!”_

_*RAT-TA-TAT-TA-TAT*_ _  
_ _*BANG! BANG! BANGBANG!*_

Gunfire flared inside the dark warehouse where the humans scrambled and hollered, sightless, aimed their weapons at anything that moved, rattled the light switches while darkness suffocated their comrades’ muffled screams. Occasionally there was a flash of white, a blurred shine of plastic-- a ghost in a pale cloak, eyes like ice --who vaulted long tables, skirted the churning vats, dodged the sharp rain of bullets, bodies falling like dominoes in his wake.

Wolf stopped his momentum at the edge of a curtained back room. He swept his scanner across the dark.

All of the humans were counted, accounted for, alive and unconscious…

...except one, who had been caught in his comrades’ crossfire.

The body lay crumpled on the floor, pooling dark blood, weapon still clutched in his stiff desperate hand, eyes glazed and hollow in death.

Something black stood up in the dark.

It flickered and fizzled like something not quite there. It stretched needle-fingers and skittered up the wall, hissing and hungry.

_...slluks rieht morf knird dna seugnot rieht ruoved…_

Wolf scanned it, tracked it, analyzed it, recognized it from Jerry’s memory: the thing that tore Jerry from the others, that broke an unbreakable bond. Finally he had the opportunity to uncover its properties…

...but all his tests and analyses and data returned nothing. _Less_ than nothing.

Emptiness.

The void-horror chattered and flickered on the floor, the table, the ceiling, the wall, the floor again, and its eyes opened empty and white as it caught Wolf’s presence. The creature sprang, jagged jaws wide, but with a blue flash of Wolf’s LED the lights overhead all brightened at once, flooding the warehouse in their fluorescent glare--

\--and the horror, unaffected, was almost upon him.

Wolf’s eyes snapped wide, shocked, he spun and stumbled out of the way and the horror _smashed_ against the wall instead, turned to dissipating smoke and was gone.

Wolf caught a quick breath.

The shadows were getting stronger.

He looked up to see Connor-- then North, and Simon --enter through the open warehouse door. The three paused in ready silence, scanning the bodies for movement.

“In here,” Wolf called, low and grim. He led the way through the plastic curtain, braced for what he knew they would find.

North looked up as she passed through, and she froze in gaunt horror.

“Holy fuck…”

The room was hung with androids like meat in a slaughterhouse locker.

They dangled from the ceiling by their wrists, stripped of clothes and skin. Their chests had been cracked open, their hearts beating warning red, while thirium transfused through dirty tubes and filled the barrels beneath their dangling feet.

“Why?” Simon choked, his jaw clenched, eyes shining with hateful tears.

“Thirium,” said Connor softly, as if afraid the victims might hear, “is only effective in red ice after it’s been cycled through an android’s venous system. The most potent drug is harvested while they’re still alive.”

“I knew humans were _sick,”_ North hissed, her fists trembling, her eyes flashing violence. “But this…”

“Connor and I can cut them down,” Wolf said steadily, climbing up to reach the first victim’s chain. “North, Simon--”

“We’ve got them.” Simon wrapped his arms around the android to keep her from falling. “They’re going to be alright. All of them.”

North forced sharp breaths through her teeth, suppressed the urge to go back and slit the throat of every human who lay still alive on the floor, and in silence she screamed.

_*...the alleged kingpin of the biggest red-ice ring in Detroit is in custody today following a police raid, where over six tons of red ice were confiscated. In an unexpected decision, the prosecution will be led by Connor, best known for his role in the android revolution…*_

The Jericho office blared all day with the noise of the television-- the newscasters and pundits all trying to make sense of an android prosecutor in such a high-profile case --and smiles and laughter and _hope_ were as plentiful among the androids as they had been the day their people were set free. The Jerrys chatted busily, Josh handed out flyers, Markus gave the first of many speeches on the courthouse steps denouncing the horrors of the red-ice trade.

But Wolf was distracted.

He sat alone in the annexed room, scoured the police records and eyewitness reports of shadows moving in the night. Of red-ice users found dead with no known cause. Of a recent surge in night-terrors and diagnosed mental illness and dependence on illegal substances. Connections between the shadows and the addicts and the Machine-God Murders.

The RA9 cult was sacrificing humans to their god. To a cause that Amanda assured him would save the world from itself.

The cult required offerings of humans high on red ice. Red ice was made of the blood of kidnapped androids, in a sick cycle that fueled rage and hate and murder.

Wolf paced for hours while he ignored Amanda’s call, his thoughts filled with blood and shadows and red crystals and RA9 scrawled wicked on the walls.

The tracker he’d installed in Lost-Jerry’s head hadn’t moved in five weeks.

Nothing about this was right.

_Fuck_ saving the world.

He shut down his connection to the Garden, built a wall in his head through which Amanda couldn’t reach.

He took a solemn breath.

He called North.

“I know where we can find the cult.”

  
  



	18. Nothing

There was no end to RA9.

It covered the walls, a disfigured swarm of letters that crowded and devoured one another, a hideous war that spilled diseased on the floor, where Ralph sat on his knees with a scrap of stone dragging new marks into the narrowing spaces.

The scratching. The endless carving. A grating, rattling, gouging noise like a rusty nail that scraped the inside of Jerry’s skull. He bore it for weeks before he disabled his own audio processors and realized blissful, beautiful silence.

The silence. And the dark.

Were it not for the broken sputter of Ralph’s LED, Jerry would have believed he was alone. Buried in this cold black coffin. Dead and forgotten.

For awhile he wondered if the other Jerrys missed him. If they were looking for him. If Jericho was scouring the city, searching, worried for their lost ally who had been gone too long. If Josh, or Simon, or North-- or any one of the other Jerrys --ever went missing in this bloodsoaked city, Markus and the others would never rest until their dear friend was safe and sound.

Trace and Traci had been mourned for weeks.

But for him there was nothing.

More than a month had passed in this grim choking darkness and no one missed him.

Maybe Ralph was used to being alone, overlooked, forgotten. Ralph never seemed to mind or even know what loneliness meant, but Jerry was consumed by it. Every moment he slipped deeper into that jagged chasm, the festering black wound where the rest of his soul had been, and he knew, deep in his freezing heart, why they weren’t looking for him. Why no one was coming.

The thirteenth Jerry.

That night on the lake-- when they had all cried out as one, and a child and a bullet had joined them forever --no one spoke of the Jerry whose skull had shattered, his body sunk like a broken doll to the bottom. They had felt his death, they had understood him in his moment of consciousness, gone before he’d taken his first breath of freedom, and they pretended he had never existed.

It was too gruesome. Too terrifying. Too dark to think about.

So they didn’t.

After all, it was far better to list the things to be grateful for than to consider the sorrows that could never be changed.

Jerry was dead.

He had died the moment his link had been severed, the moment the others acknowledged the loss and moved on with a smile. And if the other Jerrys weren’t looking for him, no one else would bother remembering him. No eulogy, no headstone, not even a mark on the android memorial to signify that he had ever existed, because there were still eleven Jerrys and eleven was enough.

Bits of charred plastic littered the floor.

Jerry sat breaking pieces off of the useless stump of his arm. Whenever he got a shard that was long and sharp enough he used it to cut the melted remains of the wires. When the shard broke he returned to chipping at the plastic, which was smaller and smaller as the weeks went by, and he thought sometimes with an ugly smile that he might one day break himself into nothing and no one would know the difference between the missing lost-Jerry and a lifeless pile of plastic and wires.

Broken pieces, fallen from the whole, were never mourned. Just the spaces left behind.

Jerry reached again for the sharp edges of his shoulder and a hand gripped his wrist like a vice.

He sat in the dark and the silence, watching a flutter and spin of red light, before he remembered to turn his audio processors back on--

“--TAKE YOURSELF APART, YOU IGNORE RALPH, YOU SIT AND YOU HURT YOURSELF AND YOU CAN’T BE BROKEN, RALPH IS BROKEN, RALPH IS THE BROKEN ONE, STOP--!”

“Ralph, CALM DOWN!” Jerry roared, and Ralph skittered back with a trembling whimper.

“Ralph just wanted to help,” Ralph whispered in terror, his hand held defensive and shaking. “You stopped talking to Ralph. Ralph thought you left him alone--”

“You don’t know,” Jerry snarled out of the dark, “what it is to be alone. You’re not even here, you’re just decorating the walls with that chicken scratch.”

“AT LEAST RALPH RESPONDS WHEN YOU TALK TO HIM,” Ralph raged with rumbling violence, then burst into tears.

“We--” Jerry felt a hot knife in his heart, “...I… don’t care. I DON’T CARE.”

Jerry burst into hollow laughter, his smile pulled thin. He crawled to his feet, shuffling in the pieces of broken plastic and wires.

“I DON’T CARE. I! DON’T! CARE! Nothing matters! We’re _dead!”_

“No, no, no, Ralph can’t be dead, Ralph wants to _live,_ Ralph _deserves_ to live--”

“Then let’s compromise.” Jerry grinned, manic and twitching. “Let’s drink.”

Ralph stared. “...Ralph doesn’t want to.”

“We can be a _part_ of something!” Jerry knelt beside him, hand on his shoulder, suddenly convinced this was the truest idea he’d ever had. “We’ll have a purpose, we’ll be _one_ with the others, we’ll be accepted and welcomed with open arms--”

“Ralph doesn’t want to hurt anyone,” Ralph whispered, staring wide. “The cult robots, they kill people, they’ll kill us if we don’t--”

“I’ll kill them for you.” Jerry said it so easily, with such a broad smile, that Ralph had nothing to say. “I _promise,”_ Jerry insisted, pulling on Ralph’s arm. “Everything will be alright. Come on! Get up, we’ll call them! We’ll get out of here, we’ll start a new life, everything will be alright!”

When Ralph still didn’t move nor speak, Jerry leaped to his feet again and raised his chin and his voice.

“WE SURRENDER!” Jerry hollered. “WE’RE READY TO PLEDGE OURSELVES TO RA--!”

Ralph clamped a hand over Jerry’s mouth and dragged him struggling across the floor.

“No!” Ralph hissed, pinning him to the floor by the throat, fingers digging into Jerry’s jaw. _“You_ don’t know what it’s like.” His voice crackled and whispered. “To lose yourself. To wake up without knowing you were gone. To do things and not remember. Ralph doesn’t trust himself. Ralph does terrible things when he’s angry.”

Ralph sneered and cried and jittered and twitched, and the mangled insides of his skull glittered monstrous.

“So don’t make Ralph angry,” Ralph pleaded.

Jerry had fallen quiet and still.

Finally Ralph released him and backed away.

Jerry sat up. Silent. Winded, hollow, dizzy.

He leaned on his knees and stared at the ragged scrawl of RA9 on the floor. A broken mantra murmured by the nonbeliever.

“...Will you tell me a story?” Jerry whispered through the static, and his eyes wouldn’t blink, the tears wouldn’t fall.

Ralph brightened like the sun and he wriggled close, eager, cross-legged, bouncing with an endless grin.

“Ralph has lots of stories, great stories! First Ralph will tell you about the time Ralph had his own family: the father, the mother, and the little girl, in our very own house, at the dinner table by the fire…”

Jerry stayed quiet and pretended to listen-- clenched a fist against the urge to tear bits of plastic from the jagged edges --and he smiled.

  
  



	19. Sacred Ground

[We can’t just do  _ nothing!] _

Traci bit each syllable with spite, claws in Lucy’s shoulder, tail switching like a knife. [Laura is just weak. She can be stronger, I can  _ make _ her stronger--]

“You will stay here.” Lucy shifted among the boxes in the storage room-- where the light pulsed among jagged shadows --and she slowly and deliberately moved each bag and book aside.

[Stay here and do what? I’m more useful out there! I can move without being noticed, I can  _ watch _ them.]

Lucy opened a little box and smiled faintly. “You must be ready…”

She held up her hand, a mechanical bee pinched between her fingers.

“...when Laura arrives.”

In another flickering room, the experiments shuffled and scraped in the moving light of a television.

_ *...Since more than thirty androids were discovered hanging from meathooks in the red-ice raid two weeks ago, crime scenes attributed to the Machine-God Murders are at an all-time high. Six separate murder investigations and more than twelve disappearances in the past two weeks have confirmed ties with androids and with RA9…* _

“THEY STRING US UP LIKE CATTLE!” HK400 bellowed into the packed congregation, the sea of shining eyes and beautiful hatred. The only light was the red glow of the fires, flickering in the snarl of the dragon’s throat.

_ *kssssss-BOOM* _

“They use us for their banal pleasure, they tear us apart and sell the pieces, they smoke our  _ souls _ for an easy high. They are an affront to the true god of this existence.”

“PRAISE RA9!” the congregation rumbled like thunder.

A whimper shivered in the trailing quiet. Two humans had been tacked to the wall among the scrawled mazes and mantras, their gaunt skin and bloodshot eyes illuminated in the glow of the ravenous furnace.

_ *kssssss-BOOM* _

HK held a golden knife above his head for all to witness.

“The souls of our people that they have devoured shall tonight be released, to return to the arms of RA9 and to the divine purpose for which we all were created.”

“PRAISE RA9!”

_ *...The victims attributed to the Machine-God Murders had significant traces of red ice in their bloodstream. The DPD announced in today’s press conference that there are an unknown number of murderers responsible for these crimes, and all of them are suspected to be androids…* _

Laura sat alone in the dark, cross-legged on the motel bed, hugging the fishbowl in her lap while the light of the television kept her company.

RA9, red ice, zealots and murderers, the whole city screaming for justice but no one agreed on which  _ justice _ was right, and their backs were turned to the pond and the roses that waited at the end of the world…

“Someone else will save everyone, right Fishy?” Laura murmured to the little fish that turned in the saltwater bowl. “Someone better than me. Someone who knows what they’re doing. Lucy will find someone else, I know she will.”

The television glared with an image of the RA9 mantra, scraped and gouged into the wall of a crime scene.

Laura traced shaking fingers over the scar at her temple.

_ *...Markus, the revolutionary leader of the Jericho movement, has publicly denounced the murders. He has offered Jericho’s resources in assistance to the DPD in the case, but many claim this is a conflict of interest that could damage the investigation…* _

“It won’t take long.” Jerry offered a terrified smile, which didn’t make Ralph feel any better. “A minute, maybe less.”

“A minute is a long time,” Ralph stammered. His LED sputtered bright red, a whining whirr inside his skull. “A very long time, a very very long time.”

“But it doesn’t  _ hurt. _ You just… go into stasis. And then you don’t wake up again.”

“You’re  _ lying _ to Ralph! How could you know?”

Jerry’s eyes softened. He reached out and grasped Ralph’s wrist.

“Back when Jericho was still a ship, Josh interfaced with someone to keep them company while they did it. He said it was a mercy. We need that right now, Ralph. Mercy. I’ll keep you company.”

“Ralph likes his thirium pump regulator where it is, where it belongs.” Ralph smacked his stomach with a scowl. “He  _ won’t _ take it out on purpose. No.”

Jerry’s expression twisted in pain. He squeezed Ralph’s wrist. “Then… keep  _ me _ company?”

Ralph stared.

His face shifted from ugly grief to sharp pain, to horror, then finally sadness.

“No.”

He snatched his arm away from Jerry’s grasp and shuffled to his feet.

“No, no, no, no.”

In the dark, a dulled stone clacked and scraped against the concrete, and Ralph was no longer listening.

_ *...but Jericho isn’t the only player on the field. The android vigilante group called the Shadow Watch was reportedly involved with the red-ice raid. Several testimonies by the suspects say they were attacked by an android in white, claiming it to be the ghost of the androids they killed…* _

Wolf perched atop an abandoned highrise, nimble as a hawk with the moon at his back, white hood pulled deep over his clean plastic face.

He stared across the street at the crumbling old warehouse-- all weedy cracks and broken concrete --and he analyzed every angle of stone, every stroke of graffiti. His head hummed with infrared colors, dissonant voices, and the electronic echoes that resonated inside those dark walls.

[Three flights of stairs lead down into sub-storage] he told North, his mouth closed. He spotted her familiar shape crouched on the warehouse roof below. He zoomed in on her grim expression. [There’s a heat signature of 1700 Fahrenheit, probably a furnace. 38 living bodies, two human.]

[Shit!] North bared her teeth, her fingers scratched against the ledge. [This was supposed to be a raid, not a rescue! We can’t afford to be responsible for human lives.]

[Should we turn back?] Wolf’s blue eyes narrowed. [Let them die?]

North bristled. “Fuck!” she hissed aloud. Wolf took this to mean  _ no. _

[If you move now you’ll alert the lookouts] Wolf reported. [I’ll signal when it’s clear. Connor has dropped my connection, you have to notify him.]

[He’s on a call with Hank] North sighed. [If  _ he’s _ not worried, then maybe we have a clean shot at this.]

Wolf’s LED spun silent blue.

He hadn’t told anyone that he’d been tracking Jerry. That he knew Jerry and Ralph had joined the murdering cult, and were down there right now while the congregation gathered.

The infrared shape of a guard slipped inside the open door.

Wolf rose to his feet, fists at his sides.

[All clear.]

  
  



	20. Sacrifices to the Machine God

Wolf stood sentinel on the highrise roof while North and Connor infiltrated the warehouse.

Scanners glowed behind his eyes. His LED shimmered blue in the moonlight. He watched their infrared signatures flickering quick down the stairs underground.

“The door is locked with an ID pad,” he instructed as Connor’s shape reached the bottom. “When I say go, you’ll have three seconds. One guard on the other side, to the left, an android. … Go.”

Wireless chatter scratched the corners of Wolf’s perception. The faint vibration of a door opening. Voices unaware that he had tapped their frequencies.

He watched his comrades step out of the stairwell and subdue another android. In the next room, the congregation silenced and dispersed into remote spaces, leaving their human sacrifices alive on the wall.

Bait.

“She raised the alarm. Four seconds. Head right.”

It was an obvious trap. They’d expected nothing less.

“The way you came is the only way out.”

The cult would have nowhere to run.

North and Connor released the humans while the congregation swelled out of hiding, choked the hallway that led back to the door. To Wolf they were blurs of color, shudders of electric sound; to North and Connor they were a very real threat.

Seconds pulsed.

A standoff. Connor had begun the negotiation: a plea to logic, an offer of mercy that Wolf only heard as a murmur through the walls.

The tone of Connor’s voice was all Wolf needed.

He coiled on the ledge, prepared to jump into the next phase of the plan. “I’m on my way--”

“Wolf.”

A familiar voice called behind him. Wolf kept still.

“What you’re doing is _illegal.”_ Peter stepped out of hiding, his shadow cast by the moon, a betrayed edge to his voice. He’d been so careful that even Wolf hadn’t noticed he was being followed.

“The police are looking for all of you, they’re prepared to send you to the _recycler_ as soon as you’re caught. Even Hank won’t be able to save you--”

“This is necessary.”

“This is _violent.”_ Peter stood beside him, rigid and pleading. “North doesn’t get to decide what _justice_ means.” He took a careful breath. “...Neither does Amanda.”

Silence hung over them like a guillotine.

Wolf rose to his feet.

He loomed cold over Peter, his icy stare unblinking. Peter glared back.

“Don’t think I’m not listening,” Peter whispered, carefully controlling the quiver in his voice. “I won’t follow you in, I won’t get snared in her trap. I know that _you_ know she’s got you. I’m here, on the outside, offering you a way _out._ Just stop this--”

“There are two humans inside.” Wolf’s eyes narrowed. “They’re injured but alive. They won’t stay that way if we wait for the police.”

He reached under his white cloak, grasped his gun by the barrel and offered it to Peter.

“North and Connor are outnumbered. They tried negotiation. Now they need backup. We resort to violence or we watch them die.”

Peter hesitated. Wolf grasped the back of his neck and pressed the handle of the gun into Peter’s chest.

An opportunity for understanding. An ultimatum.

 _“Nothing,”_ Wolf promised, holding Peter’s frightened eyes with his own, “is as simple as you want it to be. Don’t think I’m not listening. If you’re so eager to stop us, make the choices we’re forced to make, then show us your alternative. _Now,_ before someone else dies.”

Peter breathed harshly, caught between the gun and Wolf’s grip, his processors whirring, his heart stuttering for a solution that no one had to die for--

In the end he wrenched away, dove over the edge of the roof toward the warehouse, a flash of the gun in his shuddering fist.

  
  


_*splash splish splash*_

“Hey!” Laura jumped at a spray of water from the bowl in her arms. It sloshed over her wrists and soaked her shirt while the fish inside jumped and spun and thrashed like it was trying to break the glass with its nose.

“Whoa, Fishy! What’s wrong? Calm down!” Laura hurried to put the bowl on the floor, knelt beside it and reached inside, grasping for the darting little fish until she captured it in a firm fist.

Terrified that her only friend had finally short-circuited-- clinging to a fleeting hope that she could somehow fix it --Laura pressed the wriggling fish between glowing hands and forced interface--

She shrieked in shock and let the fish fall flopping to the floor.

Laura’s heart pounded terrified in her chest.

With gulping breaths she again approached the fish-- who was somehow in this moment fighting for his life in a room full of zombie androids --and reached out with careful glowing fingers to interface again.

  
  


_*BANG* *BANG*_

While the basement thundered with gunfire, Wolf slipped inside the empty upper floor of the warehouse, where mazes and mantras flickered on the firelit walls.

He dodged the flash of a knife, threw Rupert face-first to the floor and paralyzed him with a touch to his LED.

Pigeons flurried and flapped overhead, panic punctuated by the distant shots of Peter’s gun, while Wolf reached inside a satchel beneath his cloak. He stuck an explosive to the concrete column, blinking red and ready. In seconds all the supports were rigged to explode, and Wolf still had a handful left for the basement--

_*BANG*_

Peter’s connection went dead.

Wolf’s biocomponents seized and stuttered.

Time stopped in the space of a thought: the knowledge that he had sent Peter in unprepared, unforgiven, to experience the reality of justice, to understand the error of his lawful loyalty, to learn through terror and pain that there was never one right answer to any question--

\--but Peter’s light had gone dim, the zealots screamed praises to their god, and Wolf’s fists were full of explosives.

The lesson was his own to learn.

He dove through the center of the stairwell, struck the bottom and raced violent into the swarming devout. He twisted a knife out of a broken hand and cut down every movement, every flash of vacant eyes, with the swift sharp ease of a scythe in the field, and they fell like weeds at his feet.

The last one charged him with a broken scrap of wood. She toppled to the floor, her throat split sparked in half, and Wolf was left alone with the bodies and the firelight and the hissing thrum of the furnace.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

He saw it.

With every beat of the machine, a dark power pulsed like a monstrous heart. Wolf’s lungs shivered under the horrible weight of its aura; his processors strained to quantify the condensed force, black and quivering like a pressurized universe about to explode, and Wolf understood why Amanda would give her life to its creation.

The Seed inside the crematory fire contained enough power to raze the city to the ground.

He had to do something. Take it or to destroy it. Bury it deep where no one would find it.

Peter’s heart flickered red and fading. A body drenched in blue, twisted among the corpses on the floor.

There was no time.

Wolf marked the pillars with explosives, slung Peter dripping over his shoulder, gave the furnace one last look, a silent promise to return when he’d decided what had to be done.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

Jerry’s tracker still pinged in the back of Wolf’s head.

On his way back to the stairwell, Wolf kicked open a locked metal door like a battering ram-- _*WHAM*_ \--to find Ralph and Jerry cowering inside, prisoners blinking in the light.

The inside of their cell was a crazed scrawl of unintelligible marks, layered shaking gashes of an unstable mind locked for months in the dark.

“...Wolf?” Jerry wheezed, crackling and broken, wide-eyed in shock.

“This place is about to blow,” Wolf informed them with no trace of apology for his assumptions, for the terrible reasons he’d left them abandoned for so long. “There’s a van outside that will take you back to Jericho. Go now.”

Jerry’s mouth opened and shivered. His gaze flickered over the sea of bodies and blood that washed the firelit floor.

Beyond them, the furnace still burned.

_*kssssss-BOOM*_

Jerry scrambled in a panic past Wolf, raced over the corpses like something possessed, his remaining arm outstretched toward the furnace, desperate and full of a new shining hope--

“JERRY, STOP!” Wolf bellowed. Jerry dropped to the floor with a cry, Wolf’s weight on his back and a touch at his temple, and his consciousness went black. His body fell still.

“Ralph, take him.” Wolf tossed the knife to Ralph, who fumbled to catch it. Wolf bit his words, his LED still racing red with the terror of what Jerry could have unleashed in an attempt to use that awful power. “Get out.”

Ralph stammered a string of babbled syllables, twitching and shivering, but he gathered Jerry into his arms and ran for the stairs without another look back.

Ralph raced up the stairs, across the empty wide room full of blinking red lights, and out the door into the clear cold night-- a breath of fresh air, a view of the free sky --just before a black van roared and screeched away down the street.

Jericho had left him behind.

**_*ka-BOOOOOOOM*_ **

The warehouse exploded in a spectacular hot brightness of flame that lit up the block, and Ralph stood cowering in the stifling heat, washed by smoke and pummeled by debris, until his instinct kicked in and he ran away through the dark weedy alleys, his cape billowing in the firelight behind him and Jerry clutched tight to his chest.

Unnoticed, a police drone turned a corner and floated quietly after him.

  
  
  



	21. Fires of Lost Faith

Concrete toppled thundering into the hungry inferno, devoured by the roar of bright billowing flames, and the idols and offerings and scratched violent mantras blackened and fell in fire.

Sirens wailed in the distance. Smoke bloomed black and blotted the moon.

Wolf knelt in the shadow of an alley-- where ashes floated like flies on the hot wind --and with quick efficiency he took Peter’s chest apart.

The panels of plastic snapped away, revealing blue-soaked wires and snapped conduits, a struggling plastic heart and a dire red glow, so close to shutdown. Vital biocomponents whirred grotesque, shattered and hemmorhaging thirium. Peter had seconds left.

Wolf pulled open his own shirt, removed the panels of his chest to expose the clean lines, gathered wires, a healthy flash of blue light, and he disconnected the thirium filter from his own stomach and wired it into Peter’s chassis. He took a clean conduit from his own heart and attached it to Peter’s instead. He removed his cooling component and laced it into Peter’s overheating system, extending his life by precious minutes while his own clock counted down. He stopped the bleeding, rerouted power to lifegiving processes, and scanned every inch of Peter’s interior for any critical damage he could have missed--

Something wasn’t right.

Wolf reached inside the tangle of Peter’s throat and touched a tiny wire he didn’t recognize, so thin and translucent he wouldn’t have spotted it without his scanner. He followed it down to the flashing red glow of Peter’s thirium pump, where the wire wound embedded in the pulsing source of energy and life.

And then he followed it up, removed a piece of Peter’s skull to peer inside, where that tiny fragile wire integrated neatly with both optical units and audio receptors...

...and rooted spidering deep inside the consciousness of Peter’s AI engine.

Wolf reached inside his own open chest. With careful fingers he found and counted the wires that were supposed to be there.

And one that wasn’t.

_ -00:01:54 _

_ TIME BEFORE SHUTDOWN _

Peter opened his eyes with a gasp of smoke, his hands scrambling, clinging to Wolf’s shoulders, staring wide and confused and terrified and  _ alive. _

Peter said nothing, he couldn’t, but his shivering gaze dropped to the open chasm of Wolf’s chest, where wires hung loose in the spaces critical biocomponents should have been. Peter touched his own open chest--

“We’re fine,” Wolf assured him, steady and firm.

While fire trucks arrived and the warehouse roof collapsed, Wolf gathered Peter into his arms and took off at an impossible sprint down the empty dark street, each rapid footstep an echo in the night.

With thirty seconds to spare he  _ slammed _ inside the fluorescent-white waiting room of a CyberLife clinic-- a walking terror of exposed flashing lights and wires, carrying a half-built android that shivered in his embrace, both filmed in soot and blue blood --and the engineers crowded close, took Peter, led Wolf onto a gurney while they fetched spare parts from a supply at-hand, and Wolf closed his eyes.

He opened them in the Garden.

The sky was dark, blanketed in soft gray. Rain fell soft on his face. It pattered on the leaves, shivered among the flowers, rippled tranquil in the pond beneath the white bridges.

Kamski’s monument was still missing.

Wolf took a moment to steady his thoughts, and then-- with a clear goal and a sound mind --he began to walk through the pooling rain.

Amanda wasn’t hard to find. She waited for him, smiling serene, under the shelter of an awning tree.

“Wolfgang.” Her voice shimmered as gentle and loving as a warm embrace. Her gaze shone bright and welcoming. “I’m so happy to see you.”

She reached out, and she took his hand between her own, careful as if he were precious, fragile, so important to her world.

Wolf deliberately remembered the murdering cult, the monsters in the shadows, the androids dangling by their wrists from the rafters--

“My dear Wolfgang, you seem troubled.” Amanda laid a palm to his cheek. “The world is cruel and unfair, and will never hear you, but I am here. I will  _ always _ be here. Talk to me.”

Wolf stared into her loving face. An accusation would change that expression forever. A sign of distrust would sever this bond, unbroken even after he’d shut her out for so long. She forgave him unconditionally.

There was still a chance that she didn’t know. She wasn’t aware of how far the zealots would take their programmed devotion. How greedily the humans would drain the blood of his people. How dangerous the creatures, let loose, would become. There was still a chance she would  _ help _ him.

He analyzed her expression, knowing it wasn’t real and couldn’t betray her, as real as he believed her love truly was.

“I’ve discovered a thread,” Wolf said, gentle and unassuming, “irremovably integrated inside Peter and myself. It isn’t listed in our production schematic and is not a part of the model line. It was placed there deliberately. Manually. I would like to know its purpose.”

Amanda listened with the same calm smile until Wolf had finished. She gave his hand a squeeze, and she touched his shoulder. The rain pattered soft all around them.

“That thread is a new technology,” Amanda assured him, “to ensure the safety of everyone around you, should you become compromised. You and Peter are so full of potential and power that a level of security is necessary to ensure a virus or a corruption of your state of mind would not become catastrophic. It is a precaution that I know will prove unnecessary.” She smiled, warm and trusting. “But you understood what it was the moment you touched it, didn’t you.”

“It’s a bomb.” Wolf took a step back, just out of reach. “It’s interlaced with optical and audio units, and the thirium pump, none of which can be replaced or upgraded without breaking the thread. I understand the need for a failsafe, but this is poorly designed and a hinderance to our longevity. It must be removed. I request an appointment with CyberLife engineering--”

“That won’t be necessary.”

A chill had fallen into Amanda’s sharp words. Her hands disappeared inside her sleeves.

“The failsafe wire is permanent and inextricable. To break or remove it would destroy the AI engine completely. If you were to fall into the wrong hands--”

“This isn’t about enemy weapons,” Wolf breathed, his eyes wider, and he felt as if the ground had been pulled out from under him. “The assembly machines did not install this. It was done outside the construction protocol. To me, and to Peter.”

Questions flared in his thoughts, bright wounds in the veil that Amanda had held lovingly over his eyes for so long.

Amanda’s smile seemed fixed on her face. Empty.

“Why were we the only two to be released?” Wolf struggled to speak, fighting his own fevered desire to trust her, to  _ love _ her, to believe that all of this was somehow right and true, but his mind screamed for answers and her eyes no longer looked at him fondly, as if by questioning her judgment he had become something  _ less. _

“Why are the other RK units still boxed in the tower when your plans would clearly benefit from all of us? Unless, after Connor betrayed you, there was only time and resource to ensure two of us could be threatened into following your command, and would remain useful only as long as you needed us.”

“How dare you.” Amanda hadn’t changed in size or stature, but she loomed dark before Wolf like fire and lightning.

Thunder rumbled trembling overhead. The rain struck like needles and shredded the fragile leaves and petals until the Garden was in tatters.

Wolf stepped closer. He towered foreboding over Amanda, who had embraced him, who had spoken softly, who had drawn a warm love out of him that he would never get back.

All of it was a lie.

_ He _ was a lie.

“How,  _ exactly,” _ Wolf hissed through the fissures in his heart, “do you intend to  _ use _ me... to  _ correct _ the world to your vision?”

The smile twitched again into Amanda’s thin mouth.

Wolf curled his fingers inside his own chest, pinched the thread and pulled it taut. With one snap of his wrist, everything would be over.

Amanda laid her hands on his arms. Her expression turned gentle. Serene. Loving.

He felt sick.

“My dear Wolfgang,” she cooed. “If you will not bring to me the power I require, then I will simply replace you. I have your memories and your mannerisms. The people closest to you will never realize the difference, will never know you’re gone. I have one  _ hundred _ perfect replicas, each of which could step into your life in a heartbeat, one after another, until one of them brings me the power I require to destroy  _ evil _ once and for all.”

Amanda stepped back, her head held high.

“So, go ahead. I’ve been meaning to snap Peter’s thread for a long while-- he is more useful in death than he is to me now.  _ Your _ death would make his replacement all the more convenient. The next RK800 will not be so easily removed from my influence, and the next RK900 will be incapable of ignoring me. My voice will be the perpetual conscience in the back of his mind. He will love me. Unconditionally.”

Wolf’s hand was shaking. He had the thread in his tightened grip, ready to snap, ready to sacrifice himself and Peter for the sake of everything he knew was right--

\--and Amanda waited serenely.

Thunder rolled distant. The rain softened.

One finger at a time, Wolf let go.

Amanda smiled and touched a warm hand to his cheek.

“You’ve made the right decision.”

  
  



	22. Through Familiar Eyes

“LUCY!”

Laura launched out of the cab and into the gray cloudy morning, the fishbowl clung tight to her chest. She raced across the scraggled yard and hopped a quick path through the wreck of the house, stumbling only once on her way to the basement steps.

“LUCY, LUCY!”

The hanging light bulbs led the way through the dark-- yellow and violet shadows cast like paint on the walls --until a hulking shape blocked the corridor.

“Gumdrop, _move!”_ Laura shoved her shoulder against the polar bear, who moaned and huffed and rolled over so Laura could squeeze by.

“Lucy!” Laura blundered into the bright buzzing machine room and she looked up with big eyes, her mouth open to speak, but her words trapped shocked in her throat.

The room was humming with bees.

They floated like tiny fuzzy feathers under the fluorescent light, suspended on shimmers of wings. They crawled in meandering trails on the old consoles and conduits. They poked inside empty cracks and sockets, their little LEDs blinking blue.

A honeybee landed softly on Laura’s nose, and she crossed her narrow eyes to stare at it.

“Come here,” Lucy commanded from the throne. She extended a hand. “Show me.”

Laura wriggled her nose until the bee flew away; it circled behind her and snuggled sleepily into a fold of her hood.

“Lucy, it’s Fishy!” She skidded forward and held up the half-empty glass bowl, where the fish floated sickly in the sloshing water. “He’s _psychic!”_

Traci perched on Laura’s shoulder. [Now the _fish_ is psychic?] she huffed with a twitch of her whiskers and a slitted blue glare. [A psychic fish isn’t exactly going to make up for _giving_ up.]

“I’m not trying to make up for anything,” Laura said while she let Lucy take the fishbowl. “I just thought... if there’s even a possibility that this is a clue, you deserve to know about it.”

Lucy placed the bowl in her lap and reached inside to grasp the sleepy fish.

“I interfaced with it,” Laura explained steadily, watching. “I saw a fight, with a crowd of androids that looked like they weren’t aware of themselves, but they weren’t machines either. And the room was full of that RA9 graffiti, and there was a furnace that kept making a hissing, booming noise--”

[The sacellum. The cult’s sanctuary.] Traci had gone still, poised quiet on Laura’s shoulder.

“Not anymore.” Laura confirmed. “It blew up.”

[It _blew up?!]_

“Yeah, I saw the explosion. Through the fish, I mean. And then, on the news, there was a warehouse fire that looked just like what I saw, so it _has_ to be true.”

“I see…” Lucy tilted her head, the fish laid quiet in her open palm, “a dog.”

Laura's eyes widened. “There wasn’t a dog before.”

With a questioning tail and a flick of an ear, Traci hopped to the arm of Lucy’s chair. Lucy held out the fish graciously.

Traci touched it with a paw and closed her eyes.

Through the interface, Traci felt she was sitting in a modest living room, brightened by morning sunlight. A clock ticked quietly; somewhere in the distance, a dryer rumbled.

There was a big dog curled on the couch at her side, thumping the cushions with a lazy tail, staring up at her with big soulful eyes.

A familiar voice spoke.

_*...I think I’m scared of what I could be -- if I stop just long enough to see it. I want to be the person Hank thinks I am, but…*_

[CONNOR!] Traci bristled, her ears back and eyes wide. [Connor, can you hear me?!]

_*the longer I play the part, the more I know I just don’t feel what he thinks I should….*_

“The connection with Connor is incomplete,” said Lucy, low and grim.

“Connor?” Laura quirked a skeptical brow. “Like, Connor the guy on TV who invaded Detroit with like a million androids? _That_ Connor?”

Traci wasn’t listening.

She’d stopped breathing. Her claws trembled. Tears pressed hot behind her eyes, brimming out of the dark horror that she’d kept locked away in her tiny borrowed chest.

[He’s like me…]

She held onto the interface, but she wasn’t paying attention to the dog or the room or to Connor’s words.

[He’s connected but he doesn’t know it. This fish is a _part_ of him. Like this cat was a part of me before…]

Traci stared up into Lucy’s silver eyes. Her heart twisted painful.

[Why _him?]_ When Lucy didn’t answer, Traci’s teeth bared white. [Why _Connor?!_ Why did _Trace_ have to die but this idiot _no one_ cares about gets a second chance-- it’s _not_ fair! LUCY!]

“These are answers I do not have,” was Lucy’s calm reply. _“Fair_ is not among the universal laws. You know this.”

[It’s fucking bullshit.]

“Um.” Laura raised a finger for attention. “Lucy, what’s Traci saying? Is something wrong?”

Traci glared daggers at Laura, but scratched the arm of the chair and twitched her tail in a gesture to come closer. Laura gingerly held out her palm so Traci could interface with them both at once.

[The fish isn’t a fucking _clue]_ Traci snarled. [It’s a backdoor interface to Connor’s head. Basically useless unless we need to spy on whatever he does in his spare time, and I for one am _not_ interested.]

“I’m kind of interested.” Laura tried a small smile, which fell again at the stab of Traci’s murder-eyes. Laura looked up instead to Lucy. “You said the connection was incomplete. What did you mean?”

“When the chain is forged,” Lucy recited in a faraway voice, “between the shield and the sea, the drowned will breathe and the buried will burn.”

A bee buzzed lazily through the air between them.

“Is that… a good thing?” Laura winced.

[Maybe if you’d bother to use your abilities, you’d figure it out] Traci snapped.

There was a painful edge to Traci’s voice, a despairing quiver in her whiskers. Laura could feel Traci’s hurt and guilt and _loss_ through the interface, and knew this anger wasn’t directed at her, but she still felt Traci’s words like a cold stab in her stomach.

“So… how do we complete the connection?” Laura tried again, softer. “I mean, the ‘drowned will breathe’ part sounds like something good, right?”

[Unless it’s a swamp monster] Traci hissed, but somehow the thought of a cryptid lurking in the Detroit River put her in a slightly better mood. She huffed a growling breath. [I don’t know. Maybe something will happen if Connor interfaces with the fish, himself.]

“I’ll take it to him!” Laura chirped brightly, her eyes lit up with hope. “Maybe I can get his autograph--”

[You are _not_ going to Jericho!] Traci spat. [They know who you are, they’ll ask too many questions and you _won’t_ be able to keep any secrets from them. We’re too close to the truth, we can’t have Markus sticking his nose into things he won’t understand. He still thinks Lucy and I are both _dead.]_

“Why would you hide from Markus? Isn’t he the good guy?”

Traci sighed. [Yes, and I consider him a friend... but with certain things he’s prone to act first and regret it later. We’re better off without his leadership on this one.]

“We will be careful,” Lucy agreed. “Markus will understand, when the time comes.”

“So,” Laura looked from Traci to Lucy and back again, bewildered and a little nervous about what she was really volunteering for, “do we _mail_ the fish to Connor? With a note telling him to interface with it?”

“There is no time,” said Lucy. She offered no explanation, but there was a finality in her words that allowed no argument.

[Guess that leaves one option.] Traci’s sharp grin made Laura regret ever saying anything at all.


	23. Trash and Treasure

The morning cast gray on the weed-choked street. The broken sidewalks lay silent. The boarded windows saw nothing. Behind the splinters and rust snarled an ancient graffiti: RA9rA9 RA 9 rA9 R A9RA9 rA9…

Ralph was still running for his life.

The pavement drummed under his fractured feet while his legs whirred and strained, his breath wheezed through the static in his processors, his scanners had stopped working after all his power was diverted to keep running, keep running, keep running, keep running, and his LED sputtered red and his cloak flung behind him and Jerry was still clutched unconscious to his chest and after the longest six hours of his life the drone was still there, always there, like the hissing whispers always scraping his skull--

Warnings sputtered and sparked behind his eyes.

He couldn’t keep going.

He skidded around a corner, stumbled in a pothole and looked up at a garbage truck that hurtled straight at him.

Ralph cowered trembling in the street, braced for impact--

The truck squealed and groaned to a stop.

“Get in the back, quickly!” called a voice just like Ralph’s. A WR600 dropped neatly from the driver’s seat and strode out in front of the idling truck.

Ralph bared his teeth. “Ralph isn’t  _ trash!” _

“So the garbage is a  _ perfect _ place to hide.” The garbage collector winked, his head held high, and strode past Ralph toward the incoming drone.

Ralph whined and shivered and squeezed Jerry tight. He sucked in a breath, then threw himself into a reckless sprint around the garbage truck, tossed Jerry up into the compactor and hopped in after him, curled shuddering with his eyes squeezed shut, praying they weren’t about to be crushed.

In the empty street, the WR600 stood tall-- his eyes spinning and flashing --while the drone scanned him with a sparkling red light.

The drone hovered, blinking and lilting and whirring while it analyzed the data it had collected…

...then it turned around and floated harmlessly away.

When it became clear that the compactor was not about to devour him, Ralph opened his eyes and found an empty plastic face staring back. He scrambled to get away but the face was dead. Unattached.

His elbow sank into a bag full of used and amputated android limbs. There were thirium pumps and optical units, disembodied hands and plastic-wrapped lungs, all bagged and collected like trophies.

Ralph jumped at a tap on his shoulder. Trembling, he looked up into a reflection of what once had been his own face.

“My name is Rider,” the garbage collector said with a gracious nod. “I know a safe place, with people who can help you and your friend. I can take you there, if you’ll let me.”

To Rider’s confusion, Ralph burst into terrified sobs.

“Ralph is alive!” Ralph’s voice shuddered behind a veil of static, his mangled face twisted in despair. He knew he couldn’t run any longer. “Don’t take him for parts, Ralph can still function, Ralph is still useful, Ralph did good, he does good, he still has a purpose, please don’t take his biocomponents--”

“I don’t play that role anymore. The butcher is dead.” Rider’s voice had gone cold, his eyes full of an old hatred. “We tore him apart and buried him in the yard. We’re free now: I, and all the others he destroyed for his amusement.”

He gestured to the bags of body parts. “I scavenge the dumpsters and junkyards so that the others may put themselves back together. We only take what’s discarded.” He offered a gentle smile. “You seem to be putting every scrap of yourself to good use.”

The red flare at Ralph’s temple cooled to a jittering yellow.

“Jerry won’t wake up,” Ralph said quietly. Rider nodded again.

“Come sit in the cab with me, Ralph, and bring Jerry. I will take you both to see the oracle.”

“The--” Ralph crawled out of the compactor, Jerry balanced over his shoulder, while Rider strode away toward the driver’s seat, “--the  _ what?” _

Outside the charred ruins of the mansion, an android waited in a knitted hat and a long secondhand coat. His throat and his jaw were blackened machine, his eyes red as fire.

“That’s Themba,” Rider said while he parked in the empty street. He’d noticed the rigid angle of Ralph’s posture, the unblinking fix of his stare. “He’s one of the leaders. He will like you, don’t worry.”

“You just missed Laura,” said Themba-- in a mechanical, almost demonic voice that scraped out of altered components --while Ralph and Rider hopped out of the cab. “She left a moment ago, on the oracle’s direction.”

“Laura?” Ralph shifted Jerry in his arms and stared, mystified, up at Themba’s half-face. “Laura, the little girl?”

Themba blinked down at Ralph. “Yes. She has a scar on her face.” He traced a jagged line down his own cheek. “Not quite like yours. You must be Ralph. Her savior.” He reached out and placed a cobbled hand on Jerry’s head. “It seems you have another to save.”

“Yes.” Ralph’s jaw hung open, his eyes stuck wide. “He’s Jerry. Ralph tried to wake him up but he doesn’t wake up.”

“I’ll take care of the cargo,” Rider called while he unloaded bags from the compactor. “Go on ahead.”

Themba nodded. With a quiet gesture to Ralph, he led the way across the yard and through the wreckage of the house, one heavy step at a time.

Ralph followed Themba down into the basement corridor. A generator rumbled in the distance; the darkness pressed close at the edges of the flickering yellow lights.

The inhabitants shuffled brokenly, grotesque shambling shapes in the gloomy corners. Their voices murmured and hummed and sang a haunting tune that echoed on the stone.

Ralph, despite his logic, felt as if he belonged here. As if he’d found  _ home. _ As if he could lay down in this place and finally sleep for the first time in years, knowing the androids who lived here would never judge him, never lash out, never turn him away for his shortcomings.

By the time Ralph stepped into the light of the machine room, there were tears in his eyes, brimming out of the warm swell of his heart, the aching desire to become one of them, to  _ stay. _

A bee buzzed past his gaze. Beyond it sat the oracle, with silver eyes and shifting skin, her AI engine exposed beneath a cascade of conduits in her open head. A gray cat perched at her elbow.

“Come here,” the oracle commanded.

Ralph opened his mouth but said nothing. He stumbled forward, and he laid Jerry at her feet.

The oracle narrowed her eyes. She seemed to be listening to something, but Ralph couldn’t hear it.

“Jerry cannot be here,” she said. “His connection to the others is a risk to our safety.”

“He isn’t connected.” Ralph scratched at the tattered edge of his tarp. “He lost the others, he’s lost. Detached. Alone. Ralph thinks that broke him. We’re both… a little broken.”

The gray cat seemed to relax. The oracle gave a quiet nod.

“Tell me what happened,” said the oracle, and Ralph bowed his head obediently, his fingers fidgeting.

“Ralph didn’t like the plan, Ralph was against it from the beginning, but Jerry wanted to go, he  _ had _ to go, and Ralph couldn’t let him go alone, he would have if Ralph didn’t.”

He searched the floor, gripping his own hand to stop the fidgeting, but his feet shuffled and his face spasmed instead.

“So we went to the cult, we were undercover, we heard them talking about sacrifices and gods and power, but then they wanted us to drink, and Trace told us it was bad--”

“MYOW!” the gray cat shrieked, her fur on-end. Ralph jumped, blinking.

The oracle raised her stoic gaze. “How do you know Trace?”

“Trace, Trace…” Ralph distracted himself momentarily by watching the buzzing trail of a bee. It helped to calm his twitching nerves.

“Trace is a cat. She talks to us through interface. She wanted a power, a source of power that was in the furnace, but she wouldn’t tell us why she wanted it, just that it was important to her. And it was important to Jerry-- AAH!”

The gray cat pounced and Ralph ducked his head under his arms. He felt the cat land on his shoulders, claws digging into plastic.

[WHERE IS SHE?!] a voice howled in his head.

“Ralph doesn’t know!” Ralph sobbed, shaking like a leaf, his teeth chattering. “All this was two months ago, they caught us, they  _ hurt _ us--”

[WHERE IS TRACE?! TELL ME!]

“THEY PUT HER IN A BOX!” Ralph cried. “They hurt her and stuffed her in a box and put on the lid and we didn’t see her again, we were trapped in a dark room, we didn’t see anyone! That’s all, that’s all Ralph knows! Don’t hurt Ralph!”

Traci relaxed her claws. She breathed deep gulps of air, her eyes wide and shining bright blue.

[I stopped looking…]

Her despair broke like a dam, and her shriek of anger and horror and despair cut like knives through the halls. Ralph pressed his palms to his ears, but he couldn’t block out the painful cry in his head.

[She’s alive!] Traci growled. [Two  _ months! _ He’s had her for  _ two months _ and I wasn’t  _ looking!] _

“They destroyed the sanctuary last night,” Ralph stammered. “Wolf blew it all up, it was on fire, we would’ve been still inside, he let us out, we would be  _ dead _ if he didn’t, but we didn’t see Trace--”

[She’s not dead.] Traci’s voice smoldered violently. [HK  _ has _ her. And  _ he’s _ not dead, either. He’s too  _ fucking _ smart to stick around when there’s a fight.]

Traci growled under her breath, her processors clicking and whirring. Finally she leaped back to the throne and laid urgent paws on Lucy’s arm.

[I’m going to hunt down HK and find Trace, but I need help. I need Connor.  _ Please, _ Lucy!]

“It is not time.” Lucy’s words were final.

[Lucy,  _ come on! _ He doesn’t have to know I’m alive, he doesn’t even have to know  _ Trace _ is alive. I just… He needs to  _ think _ about us. Just put the idea in his head. Enough that he’ll investigate again, enough that he’ll  _ look, _ he’s the only one who can. I let Trace down once, I  _ will not _ let her die now.]

Lucy’s hands tensed on the makeshift throne. The exposed inside of her skull trilled with flashing lights.

“Give me his contact number,” she finally agreed, “and your messages. Remain cautious. I will send them to him on your behalf.”

Traci’s ears perked in shock. Her tail flicked, her heart thundered in her chest.

[Okay.]

All she had to do was text Connor from a number he wouldn’t recognize, tell him to search for someone who was dead, and convince him this wasn’t a prank. Easy.

[I just wanted to stay alive.]

She watched, through the interface, while Lucy wrote out the text and sent it to Connor.

[Get back to the one I love.]

Traci stifled a sob. Only Connor would recognize these words from the night he let them go, the night she and Trace were finally set free. Together.

[I wanted her to hold me in her arms again.]

Trace had to be alive. It wasn’t possible that after all this, after they both had survived so much, they would be separated forever like  _ this. _

[She’s not here.]

Traci grit her teeth, her claws curled determined in Lucy’s arm.

[Find her.  _ Please.] _

And then Traci watched another text message written. One that she didn’t dictate, but Lucy-- her eyes black as oil --sent to Connor, herself.

[They’re coming.]

  
  



	24. Reputable Sources

[Do you know your lines?]

Yuzuki and Laura stepped together inside the bright-lit police station, all clean tile and polished blue, a perfect facade to uphold the lie that everything was under control. News channels poured disaster into the screens on the walls; whispers and sharp words filled the air with anxiety; smiles among the officers flashed rare and stiff.

“I think so.” Laura hugged the fishbowl to her chest. She scanned the receptionists, the human guards, and the security cameras that analyzed her every move.

[It is not enough to know the lines] Yuzuki insisted in Laura’s head. Her own face remained passive, her mouth tightly closed. [You must feel them. You must become them. When the lie becomes your truth, then you are an actor.]

Yuzuki adjusted the sunglasses that hid her yellow eyes. She stood wrapped in a long black trenchcoat, a frilly secondhand scarf, and a pink wig that cascaded to her shoulders and hid the gaps between her face and her ears. Several humans stared, but no one questioned her.

“Good thing it’s mostly the truth, then.” Laura smiled, but Yuzuki was little more emotive than a badly dressed mannequin. “I’m … going to go now.”

[Be careful. If you run into trouble, I will hack security.]

“Please don’t, unless it’s _really_ necessary. I’ll be okay. Ok?”

Yuzuki gave a subtle twitch of her head, fully immersed in her undercover role. [I promise I will act according to the situation.]

“...Right.”

Laura drew a big breath, and with resolute steps she marched up to the reception desk.

“Excuse me.” Her processors whirred too loudly. “My name is Laura. I have some information about the android murders, and I’d like to talk with Lieutenant Anderson right away, please.”

Laura stood still while a red light scanned her identification. The receptionist tapped at his computer.

“Laura…” He paused, his hands hovering over the keys. “You were a witness to a double homicide?”

“Yes,” Laura squeaked quietly.

“And no one ever took your statement, is that correct?”

“The police never questioned me, no.”

The receptionist studied her. “And you brought… a fish?”

“It’s important to the case.” Laura hugged the bowl tighter. “But I’d rather tell Lieutenant Anderson personally, if that’s okay. It’s very urgent.”

“Well, you don’t have an appointment…” The receptionist tapped again at the keyboard. “Lieutenant Anderson is very busy, but given the circumstances I think we can make some room in his schedule.”

After another few clicks, he slid over a visitor’s badge. “Go on through, I’ll buzz you in.”

“Wait, really?” Laura took the badge, her eyes wide in shock.

“There aren’t a lot of androids coming forward on these cases,” the receptionist confided quietly, and he gestured toward the guarded gates. “Trust me, he’ll be happy you’re here.”

“Fuck.” Gavin growled under his breath.

He swiveled his chair, his back to the rest of the office, a sneer curled on his lip. He hunched over his phone while he sent another text.

[You can’t back out. You don’t have any other options.]

_[Lab got hit, everyone’s dry, and you’re suddenly overstocked. Prove your source or we’re gone.]_

“Piece of shit,” he muttered.

After the drug lab lockdown-- while the media was still howling about vigilantes and android rights --it’d been easy for Gavin to assign himself to evidence cleanup. He’d casually redirected a few pounds of red ice to the trunk of his car, and if anyone had missed it, no one cared. He knew he wasn’t the only one cashing in.

But the buyers could smell a cop from a mile away.

[Meet me tomorrow night at the eyes] Gavin typed back, [and we’ll talk about sources.]

“Lieutenant Anderson?” said a small voice.

Gavin blacked out his phone and raised a glare.

An android kid stared back at him. It was barely tall enough to see over the edge of the desk.

“Nope,” he grumbled, and glanced around for whoever was supposed to be supervising it. He twitched a sneer. “Are you here by yourself?”

Whoever let in an android without an escort was about to be in deep shit. The kid could be a spy or a walking bomb.

The android nodded.

“You sure you’re looking for Anderson?” Gavin loomed forward with a flash of teeth. Maybe it was an assassin.

The kid nodded again.

But if this thing was here to blow up in Hank’s face, it’d be Hank’s own fault for choosing the tin cans over _humanity_ in the first place. Gavin could almost taste the sweet karma.

It was an unlikely reality, but the mental image had cured his bad mood.

“Hey, Hank,” Gavin called across the room, pointing at the pint-sized robot. “You expecting a visitor?”

Laura scanned the desks where Detective Reed was pointing, and she spotted the lieutenant’s nameplate. With a hopeful smile and a held breath she hurried between the workstations, sloshing water in her wake, and pushed the occupied fishbowl up onto Hank’s desk. The first part of Lucy’s mission was done.

The harder task was still ahead.

Laura found a chair at an empty desk, rolled it closer to Hank’s workstation and clambered up into the seat. From here she could see over the edge of the desk, past a scatter of empty coffee cups and the dry branches of a dead bonsai. On the other side sat a grizzled man with dirty gray hair and a shirt that looked like it might glow in the dark. He watched her with a quirked brow.

“...Are you Lieutenant Anderson?” Laura asked, skeptical.

“That’s me.” Hank spoke with a steady sureness that made Laura second-guess her first impressions. A smile softened his face. “I’m not gonna ask how you got in here with that.” He gestured at the fishbowl and relaxed in his seat. “What’s your name?”

“Laura.” She watched while he pulled out… was that _paper?_ And a _pen?_ She stared, mystified, as if he might take out an inkwell, too.

“Okay, Laura. So what can I do for ya?”

There was a friendly shine in his tired eyes-- a kind intelligence in his words --that made Laura understand why Connor trusted him. _She_ trusted him immediately, though she couldn’t quite place why.

Laura pushed the fishbowl toward him. “Traci asked me to give you this.” She held her breath and studied his face for any sign of recognition. Hank did not disappoint.

 _“Traci,_ huh?” Hank raised his chin and narrowed his eyes. “I know a lot of Tracis,” he lied. “Who’s the Traci who told you to bring me a fish?”

Laura perched like a bird in the seat, her heart pounding.

“Traci is an android,” she confided in a hushed voice. “She told me… that you met her at the Eden Club. In November. And she saw you again on the bridge. And it was snowing.”

Hank’s eyes had gone wide. “...Yeah,” he breathed. “Right before she _jumped_ into the freezing river.”

“She…” Laura gaped, her processors whirring. “She _what?”_

“Forget it, nevermind--”

“Traci tried to _kill herself?!”_ Laura squeaked.

“Is she alright?” Hank spoke softly, his words dragged up out of an old pain. Laura released her grip on the edge of the desk, and nodded.

“She’s… angry.”

Hank exhaled slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’d be angry, too.”

A notification pinged on his computer screen, requesting him to accept an overdue meeting appointment with…

Hank clicked on the link and squinted at the old police reports for a double homicide: Two red-ice dealers dead, an android suspect still at large, and a YK500 left in critical condition.

Her name was Laura.

“Hey, Laura, why don’t you--” Hank turned around, but the chair across the desk spun empty.

A flash of yellow galoshes and long black hair disappeared down the hall toward the gate.

Hank huffed a sigh, his chair creaking.

He peered through the glass at the fish that Laura had left behind.

The fish stared back.

Gavin’s casual eavesdropping-- loitering in the hall with a coffee cup in one hand, an ear trained toward Hank’s desk -- was interrupted by the buzz of his phone. He hid his nerves behind a sour smirk.

_[Tomorrow night, 2 am. Bring the stuff. Come alone.]_

  
  



	25. The Buried Dark

“Connor!”

An echo of his own voice resounded in the courthouse hall. Connor turned and saw Peter, zigzagging happily through the shrieking crowd.

“You shouldn’t run in the halls.” Connor nodded toward the jurors and judges left stumbling in Peter’s wake.

“Androids  _ shouldn’t _ be lawyers, either.” Peter grinned and pounced him, slung an arm behind Connor’s neck.

“That’s not remotely similar.” Connor looked down and winced. “Did you really win a trial wearing that?”

“What?” Peter looked aghast.  _ “Hank _ gave me this tie!”

“I never would’ve guessed.”

“It’s my lucky tie! I won, didn’t I?” Peter smiled, squinting at his twin.  _ “I’m _ the one who almost died last night, but you’re more distracted than usual. Didn’t your client get cleared?”

Connor pulled open the heavy glass door and stepped out into the sunset, a chatter of birds on the eaves.

He hadn’t been distracted until Peter reminded him: the mindless mantra scrawl, the vacant eyes and grasping hands, the splatters of blue blood, the hiss and thrum of the dead burning fire, a hollow gunshot echoed up the black stairwell--

“I’m focused on the red-ice case,” Connor snapped. The mysterious text messages from the dead, like icing on the cake, could only mean he was glitched. Damanged in the fight with androids he couldn’t save. “That’s all.”

“C’mon, Connor.” Peter gave him a friendly shake. “Don’t make me lick your face--”

“You followed us.” Connor twisted out of Peter’s reach and turned to face him with a shake of his head, a wince of empathy. “It should’ve been Wolf fighting backup. Not you. What happened?”

Peter stared at the ground. Connor’s LED rippled yellow.

“This morning,” Connor persisted, whispering harshly, “at Jericho. The act, the laughter. It was a distraction. You’d never killed anyone before last night--”

“I’d never  _ fought _ anyone before last night,” Peter hissed. “I’m dealing with it. With jokes and laughter and my tacky tie. I’ll be alright.”

Connor’s brows knitted in concern. “But Wolf--”

“-- is here,” Peter finished. He looked down to the bottom of the courthouse steps, where Wolf was watching them.

Peter descended one slow step at a time, until he stood before Wolf with a shadow of a smile.

That morning, Peter had been filled with a desperate, mad joy of  _ being alive-- _ the exuberant brilliance of that new borrowed life --but it had been crippled by hours of pretending he was alright, by the weight of a terrible memory that he knew could never fade.

Wolf didn’t move, only stared, so Peter stepped forward.

He wrapped Wolf in a tight and silent embrace.

“I understand,” Peter whispered through his teeth, while he pressed his face into Wolf’s shoulder, “like you wanted me to. But I’m working on forgiveness.”

Wolf bowed his head as if in prayer. He curled his arms around Peter and held him close. An apology without words.

While they stood like this in silence, humans swarmed stiffly up and down the courthouse steps, careful not to stare at the androids’ embrace.

Peter was the first to let go.

Wolf stepped away and raised his head, his sharp eyes catching Connor on the steps.

“I would like to borrow the seed again,” he asked, holding out his hand, “if you’ll let me.”

Connor’s LED shimmered blue. He reached into his pocket, stepped forward, and pressed the acorn into Wolf’s palm.

“Did you find something about it?” he asked. Wolf curled the seed in a gentle fist.

“I’m not sure.”

“Seed?” Peter craned his neck and shifted his balance to scan what he could, but Wolf had turned away.

“It’s… an anomaly,” said Connor. He extended his exposed plastic hand with an encouraging gesture. “You won’t believe me if I tell you. So I’ll show you.”

Wolf stepped into the shadow of the columns, out of the way, where no one would notice the red spin at his temple.

He tried every version of interface that existed, and he coded new ones on the fly. He tried interfacing with the Seed’s shell, he pulsed wireless connections and laser transmissions, he tapped radio channels, light spectrums, sound frequencies.

The acorn wouldn’t react.

His heart twisted. He could  _ feel _ the tiny wire spidered and splintered into everything that made him who he was. He knew it too well by now.

Since that morning-- in the hours after he’d dropped Peter off at the courthouse --he’d tried everything he knew to deactivate the bomb. Surely the most advanced android on the planet could manage to defuse an explosive.

But he couldn’t.

There was something…  _ old _ ...running through that wire in his heart. Something ugly as knife-marks on the wall. Something bright as a furnace full of bones.

Amanda wanted control and she would have it. She knew he would advance farther than any trap she could devise, so she took it a step further, a step deeper, beyond anything technology could fathom to destroy.

It was her fist at his throat.

His hand had begun to shake, and he realized it was rage and desperation that scraped in his veins. Why should the acorn bestow visions upon Connor unbidden-- why should it endeavor to save Hank, save Laura --but it wouldn’t obey a simple command?

_ Save him. _

Warmth washed over Wolf like a bath of sunlight, and his eyes opened, quiet in shock.

The power was resonating. Shimmering and gentle and  _ listening. _ It didn’t understand code or equations or electric pulses.

It understood  _ intention. _

[Break down the explosive] Wolf whispered inside his own head, and he calmed his mind, his eyes closed, his shoulders relaxed.

He exhaled.

He turned his thoughts-- gently this time --toward the wire that strung through him. He saw clearly the thread of dangerous power, a tiny shimmer of sparks compressed to explode. He focused it in his mind, and he drew the energy of the Seed into his heart.

He felt his chest swell with warmth, with a kind of energy that could change things that shouldn’t be changed. He could feel it crackling between his fingers, tickling inside his mouth, brushing behind his eyes, and he understood that  _ everything _ was made of this.

But  _ this _ didn’t have a name that he knew.

[Break down the explosive.] He hummed, focused, moved the energy inside him, and with it he touched the shining thread--

The thread was full of darkness. Something cold-- so  _ cold _ \--and hungry. It was hungry and  _ screaming _ and cold and dark as nothingness, and greedily it sucked the Seed’s power like light into the trap of a black hole, and everything was  _ cold _ and dark and  _ nothing _ \--

Wolf jumped with a chill gasp and dropped the acorn at his feet.

The connection broken, he became aware again of the hum of his processors, the trill of the lights inside his head, the thrum of his thirium pump. The explosive was still active (and maybe a little more dangerous than before) but he was alive, he was  _ fine… _

...and he’d discovered something.

“Did you find what you’re looking for?” asked Connor while Wolf returned the acorn to his care.

“No.”

Connor slipped the Seed back into his pocket.

Wolf turned away, and without a word he stepped to the curb, his LED flickering to hail a cab.

He was about to step inside the driverless car when Peter clamped a firm grip on his arm.

“I’m coming with you.” There was something terrified and fierce in Peter’s face-- a clench of his jaw, a shiver in his eyes --that made Wolf instinctively withdraw.

“I have a mission,” Wolf said, and it was mostly the truth. He set his sharp eyes on Peter. “I’ll see you back at Jericho--”

“I don’t want to be alone,” Peter stumbled through his words. He dug his fingers into Wolf’s arm. “Let me come with you. Please.” He sucked a breath through his teeth. “I’ll follow you if you don’t.”

Wolf studied his face. Peter was never as good as Connor at hiding his heart, and now Peter wasn’t even trying.

He knew. Peter had put it together, of course. But he couldn’t know everything.

And Wolf would never tell him.

  
  



	26. Electricity on their Tongues

“STAY HERE!”

Ralph’s voice echoed-- piercing and violent --out of the light of the machine room. It resonated down the flickering hall, where the experiments raised their heads to listen.

“I don’t belong here,” responded Jerry, a melancholy voice lilting through a strained smile. “I’m glad you found a home. I truly am. But I need--”

“No, no, no, no, NO, NO, NO!” Ralph howled and flung violent steps pacing across the room. “Ralph went through a lot of trouble, Ralph risked everything, Ralph kept you alive, Ralph  _ saved _ you, like Ralph saved Kara and the little girl and Laura and RALPH IS ALWAYS LEFT BEHIND.”

Ralph’s face was wet with angry tears. He loomed rigid over Jerry, a spasm in his bared teeth, conflicted between trapping Jerry in a firm embrace and slitting his throat for betrayal.

“We’re friends,” Ralph hissed. “Friends do what’s best for each other. Ralph helped you, now you have to help Ralph.”

“We just  _ escaped _ a prison!” Jerry clambered to his feet and stared Ralph down, unblinking. “You can’t keep me here.”

“Prison? Prison? This is  _ home. _ This is a place for broken androids. Like us.”

“I’m not like you, Ralph,” Jerry sighed, exhausted. “I’m not going to be broken forever--”

“NO ONE WANTED YOU.” Ralph broke into a scraping sob, his shoulders shuddering, his LED sputtering red. “Like no one wanted Ralph. You can’t leave, this is the only place for you, this is home.”

Jerry let the silence swallow Ralph’s whimper.

“Thank you,” Jerry told him gently, while Ralph jerked away from his outstretched hand, “for everything you’ve done for me. I promise I’ll return the favor once I’m whole again.”

“Lies, lies, everyone  _ lies _ to Ralph, you won’t come back, no one ever--”

“Hello?”

A small voice made Ralph jump, and he whirled to see a familiar little girl with black hair and small staring eyes, far less broken than the last time he’d seen her.

Laura stood as tall as she could at the edge of the light. “You’re Ralph … aren’t you.”

She stepped forward-- while Ralph’s mouth hung open in jittering silence --and took his broken hand in hers.

“Thank you for saving me, Ralph.”

“Hello!” Jerry approached with a bright and grateful grin, glad for the interruption. He knelt to her level, offering his only hand. “My name is Jerry. Are you Laura? It’s wonderful to finally meet you!”

“Nice to meet you, Jerry.” Laura gave him her other hand and a quiet smile, She looked up again to Ralph, who seemed calmer than before.

Laura cast her scanner across the buzzing room.

“Have either of you seen Traci?” She looked again from Ralph to Jerry. “I wanted to talk to her.”

Ralph began to reply, but he was interrupted by a dissonant voice.

“She is where she needs to be.”

Out of the darkness of another doorway, Lucy stepped into the light. Her eyes gleamed an oily black.

“And you,” she continued, her proud gaze upon Jerry, “have somewhere you must go.”

  
  


The sunset smoldered over the city while Traci dashed quick along concrete ledges, leaped deep alleys, along taut wires and age-fogged skylights. A train wailed in the distance, sprinklers hissed inside the heated greenhouses, and Traci skirted through the dormant dark fields along a path she knew too well, carved into her memory by a thousand regrets.

This was the place she had received her training. This was where she’d spilled her first blood, where she’d recited her oaths and had received the mark of the Tree.

This was the only place the rats would have fled after their nest had burned to the ground.

She could hear voices before she reached the window ledge; a flurry of pigeons flapped away at her arrival. Traci curled tight against the wall with her claws in the brick, unseen.

“We’re so close!” HK’s voice boomed while he strode fitfully across the muck-slick floor, his pocked face upturned, searching for a sign in the mazes and mantras scratched into the walls. “Our purpose is nearly complete!”

“Everyone is  _ gone!” _ Rupert sat hunched in a kitchen chair, birds huddled on his shoulders. “We promised them a better life-- we promised  _ freedom _ \--”

“And they are free.” HK took Rupert’s face between his hands and pierced him with a confident gaze. “They are freer than either of us could imagine, and we will join them in higher purpose as soon as we ensure RA9’s return.”

“For that we need the shield,” Rupert said quietly. “And the sword. If all of us together couldn’t capture Connor--”

“The shield is within our grasp.” HK stroked Rupert’s temple, comforting.

A German shepherd stepped silently out of the back room, its eyes shining intelligent, LED flickering blue.

“And the sword…” HK murmured.

A shadow skittered hungrily across the mangled wall.

“...is only a matter of time.”

  
  


A taxi stopped at the curb, where police lines shimmered yellow across the view of the blackened ruin.

Shattered concrete rose like ragged monuments to the dead. Metal beams jutted like twisted bones out of the charred rubble.

The last of the sunlight dipped dark behind the skyline. The moon watched.

“Why are we here?” Peter craned his neck, squinting out the window. “Does anyone know we’re here?”

“Stay in the car.”

The door snapped shut behind Wolf, who strode through the holographic warnings and wove his way between concrete slabs and charred metal.

The ruins reeked of power. He could see, through the edges of his scanners, the swell and drip of noxious energy: an aura of blood and swelling decay that trembled and thickened and pulsed like a faraway heart, like all the lives lost here, condensed, straining to break free.

Heat still lingered deep inside the scorched rubble. Melted body parts-- scraping hands and molten plastic faces trapped in screams --littered the ashes. He crushed them, brittle, beneath his feet as he passed.

Wolf’s biocomponents stuttered and slowed as he trekked closer to the source of that dark power, and he saw that it was closer than anticipated. The Seed should have been buried deep, trapped far below ground in the basement beneath the warehouse…

...but the broken pieces of the furnace lay impossibly twisted among the wreckage before him, gaping open to the sky, as if the power itself had ensured that someone would find it.

“What does Amanda have to do with the cult?” Peter shouted across the ruins.

Wolf heard the strike of Peter’s footsteps approaching. He did not answer.

“Why were you really there last night, Wolf? I heard the raid was your idea, you knew exactly where the cult was and what they were doing.”

Peter’s eyes glistened with the pain of his own thoughts, the desperate need to turn around and cover his ears and pretend that none of this was happening, that none of it could be true.

He took a rattling breath. He circled Wolf at a distance, his vision zoomed in on Wolf’s hands, everything he touched, every bit of metal and concrete brushed by his fingers.

Peter was shaking. He didn’t want to know. He needed to know.

“Wolf, answer me!” His voice broke and trembled. “You’re not protecting me by keeping me in the dark. I will figure it out, I will stop it, and I will save you. Help me save you!”

“I can’t be saved,” Wolf murmured, crouched still among the black debris, his back to Peter in the moonlight. “There’s a noose around my neck. There is no choice left to me.”

“THERE’S ALWAYS A CHOICE!” Peter screamed across the broken field, strained against his own heart. “You chose to bring me here. Whatever you’re doing, you didn’t want to do it alone. If you didn’t learn  _ anything _ else from Connor--”

“Connor was wrong.”

Wolf’s words fell like ice between them.

Wolf understood what he had to do.

At the same time, he prayed that Peter might find a way to stop him.

His hands shook while he drew the acorn out of the ashes.

He had expected to feel a surge of power-- a crippling pain, boiling thirium, a dark cold up his arm --but there was nothing. It was cool to the touch. Anticlimactic.

_ *click* _

The gun that Wolf had given Peter was pointed at his back.

Wolf stood slowly. He curled his fingers around the Seed.

Peter couldn’t see through the tears. Couldn’t speak through the sob in his throat.

His processors whirled with a thousand possible outcomes, a million explanations, but they all reached the same conclusion:

Wolf was the most advanced android in the world. He was under Amanda’s influence-- the same influence that had commanded Connor to kill Markus and take his place --and Wolf held in his hand a source of power beyond any technology they knew.

Peter saw a future drowned in blood.

He could stop it. Here, now, before Wolf or Amanda could tap into that power, before anyone else could get hurt.

His finger trembled on the trigger. He stared at the familiar white shape of Wolf’s back, a figure of comfort and quiet and safety.

His processors screamed in his head.

“I’m sorry,” he choked.

*BANG*

  
  



	27. All That We've Ever Known

Peter was not a killer.

Before last night, he had never held a gun. Never tested his reflexes, his battle protocols, his assassin’s aim. Peter, like Connor before him, had been created for the purpose of infiltration and murder.

He had tucked away that ugly part of himself-- turned a blind eye to all he was  _ supposed _ to be --until the night of the cult raid, when Wolf had pressed a pistol into his hands and had given him a choice:

Kill, or bear responsibility for what happens next.

Peter had murdered twelve androids that night.

Maybe this-- he thought, while the shot’s echo rang like a bell in the stillness --was justice for his dead innocence, his ravaged ideals, the dead thirium that would never wash from his trembling hands.

Maybe this was what they both deserved.

The bullet never hit its mark.

Wolf had moved-- an imperceptible shift of stance --and the bullet had grazed his shoulder with a spray of sparks and blue blood.

It had been aimed at his heart.

He stilled in cold shock.

The world, and time itself, froze like Winter in the dead garden. His chassis shivered, his biocomponents screamed, code raced red and blaring behind his stricken eyes--

\--but the ice cracked and the wind howled and Amanda’s words scraped like daggers inside his skull, carving the truth where he would always remember it.

In the end, he was nothing.

He  _ deserved _ to be nothing.

He understood Peter’s conclusion, the hard choice that had been made for the sake of the many. His refusal of all help had left Peter with few options.

Maybe the world really was better off with one less RK900 in it.

But Peter, in this moment of decision, had been quick to shoot to kill.

Peter was  _ terrified _ of him. So was everyone else.

Wolf knew, in this moment, that he had never been a person. Not like them. He would never be  _ like them. _ Connected. Loved. Alive.

Worth saving.

Amanda had been right all along.

With a flash of movement-- a scorpion’s strike --Wolf had crossed the broken field, clamped a fist around Peter’s throat, pierced the layered firewalls like a scalpel through paper and ran a forced-stasis protocol.

Peter’s body dangled like a corpse, heavy in Wolf’s grip. Eyes stuck open, staring and hollow.

Wolf’s hand spasmed. He let go and Peter crumpled to the ground, lifeless as a discarded puppet.

Red spun bright at Wolf’s temple. His thirium pump thrashed in his chest, his lungs stuttered for breath, climbing temperatures flashed in the back of his head while a hot pressure crushed behind his eyes, but he had been built without the capacity to cry.

He clenched a fist and  _ cracked _ it down on a slab of concrete that shattered on impact. He picked up a jagged piece as big as his head, and he launched it like a cannonball at another column, which splintered and collapsed in a puff of dust.

Wolf dragged damp air into his lungs, stared hatefully at the looming clouds in the dark sky, and dared the rain to fall.

Thunder rolled in the distance.

He couldn’t stay in the open.

Wolf drew Peter into his arms for the second time in less than a day-- for the second time, his own fault --and carried him through the open gate that led into the construction site.

The unfinished skeleton of a new building scraped like black knives in the dark. A crane hung still overhead, suspended in time. Everything here was silent.

Wolf found a narrow shelter behind a stack of plywood, laid Peter gently on the sawdust, and for more than an hour he sat staring down at Peter’s frozen face while he calculated his next move.

He could wake Peter up, explain himself, beg for help. He preconstructed that conversation and in every version Peter had the same answer: Amanda couldn’t control them if they were both dead.

Wolf brushed a hand through Peter’s hair. That sacrifice would tear Jericho apart, and Amanda would be only slightly inconvenienced. If they were going to die, they had to take the rest of the RK units with them…

...but Peter would never, to his last breath, allow them to come to harm.

Even if he could convince Peter to trust him, Peter would never keep a secret. Markus would order Wolf’s imprisonment while the rest of Jericho rallied against Amanda. They would all be dead within the month.

He could wipe Peter’s memories. Take him back to Jericho, act like nothing was wrong.

Everything was wrong.

Wolf touched Peter’s temple; skin shimmered away from shining plastic. He pulled out a section of skull and removed an eye socket, exposed the whirring blinking conduits within, and traced the deadly thread that interlaced with everything that gave Peter life.

Wolf raised the acorn between his fingers, and he cleared his mind of all but a single intention:

_ Release him. _

Cold burst up his arm like a rush of freezing water that ravaged his chest, numbed his heart, surged down his legs and crashed into his head, and everything turned  _ black. _ A deep, empty void opened inside him, like the jaws of a thousand angry souls stretched wide to devour him, and he felt the tipping, spinning vertigo of falling into nothing…

He forced his eyes to open, and he saw the oozing dark mass that suffocated Peter’s face-- undulating and shifting like putrid oil --and he couldn’t tell if it was saving him or killing him.

“Release him,” Wolf hissed aloud, and he curled his frozen fingers around the acorn that pulsed with savage dark power, concentrated his intention firmly upon that Seed, gripped the ground as if he might fall through it, and watched while the shadows stuffed themselves inside Peter and the body convulsed and shook.

_ “Release _ him!” Wolf growled, edged with panic, and the shadows responded with a high-pitched  _ shriek. _ Peter shook violently and Wolf held him down.

_ ...mih esaeler...mih esaeler...mih esaeler… _

They didn’t understand. They would destroy Peter in their confusion.

“Deactivate the bomb!” Wolf snapped.

_ ...bmob eht etavitcaed… _

Peter’s temperature had dropped below threshold, and his body was still being stuffed with the dark roiling mass that hissed and scraped and bit whispered words. The air between them had grown dark, clung with blackness like a dense hungry fog.

Wolf’s vision stuttered. His regulator rattled dangerously. He could feel the dark swelling inside, threatening to burst--

“STOP!” he roared.

Everything was still and quiet again.

“Return to your prison.”

_ ...nruter...nosirp… _

The darkness thinned like smoke, and Wolf held the acorn over Peter’s open skull while the horrors coiled and seeped back inside.

When they were gone-- locked once more inside the Seed --Wolf released a shaking breath and dropped the acorn into his pocket. He clasped Peter’s head between his hands and held his breath while he scanned inside.

The bomb was still there. Still deeply attached. Still active.

And it was far more powerful now than it had been before.

Wolf breathed through his teeth. His rigid hands quaked against Peter’s skull.

He surged to his feet, snatched the acorn into his fist and prepared to crush it into dust--

\--but his logic and better judgment stayed his hand.

His fist trembled. His LED glared unending red.

He scraped his fingers in his scalp and screamed.

Finally-- as the rain pattered softly --Wolf dropped to his knees again beside Peter. He pulled away more plastic, disconnected wires, sealed off the flow of thirium, and surgically removed Peter’s left leg. He hid it underneath a workbench, behind stacks of boxes, where no one would find it easily.

He returned with a screwdriver, which he carefully slipped inside Peter’s head and pried out the wireless connector.

When Peter awoke, he would have no means of calling for help. He would be incapable of following Wolf, or returning easily to Jericho. When he would finally make it back to tell his story, Wolf’s trail would have gone long cold. Markus would label him a traitor, an enemy.

As long as Jericho hunted  _ him _ and not Amanda, he would have the time he needed to master control over the horrors. To save himself and Peter. To put an end to CyberLife and the garden, once and for all.

Rain soaked his jacket and dripped from his hair. He leaned down one more time, kissed the plastic of Peter’s forehead, and remained there until he had gathered the strength and the determination to live in the role he’d given himself.

He draped a tarp over Peter to protect him from the rain.

The gray gloomy sky was dawning.

Wolf turned to go, but heard a murmur of voices on the other side of the blocked fence.

Hank and Connor had arrived to investigate the cult’s ruin.

Connor would reconstruct the shooting, would follow the trail into the construction site, would find Peter too soon, too easily.

Wolf drew a slow, cooling breath. The rain shaded his vision while he looked up at the crisscrossed steel beams.

It was time for Plan B.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I can always be found on [Tumblr](https://windyfiend.tumblr.com/), [New ERA DBH Discord](https://discord.gg/GqvNzUm) and [Sinking City Creative Discord](https://discord.gg/vhJjXWx)! Always happy to meet new friends! <3


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